Civil Court passes injunction order against Google and Impact Guru Technology on plea filed by Crowd-funding platform, "Milap"

July 26,2019:

The plaintiff is India's leading online crowdfunding platform for charitable purposes. The plaintiff received a contribution made by the public through the website and registered domain name.

The plaintiff alleged that the defendants namely Google India Pvt. Ltd. and Impact Guru Technology Ventures Pvt. Ltd. deliberately misused the “Milap” marks to divert the traffic of the website to the second defendant.

The search bar Google opens the website of the second defendant, whenever one searches the word “Milap”. The nature of the case is based on the Intellectual Property Rights of the plaintiff. The issue of the case is related to the mark “Milap” which is a registered trademark.

It is submitted by the plaintiff that they are the first one to introduce the concept of an online crowdfunding platform for a charitable purpose. The trade name Milap is used from 2010. The mark is registered under class 9 and 36 in India, Singapore and the United States.

The plaintiff contended that the title to the defendant's website is the mark Milap. Hence, they complain that this activity amounts to passing off the trademark. The defendants denied all the allegations and said that they possess different trademark and domain. Therefore, as per the version of the defendant, there is no likelihood of confusion.

The plaintiff prayed for an ad interim injunction before Bengaluru City Civil Court. Relying upon the pleadings and documentary evidence, Bengaluru City Civil Court ordered for ad interim injunction to restrain the defendant Google from displaying the website of the second defendant while the search of Milap word is processed.

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