Bored in lockdown? For millions, online shopping came to the rescue. Groceries, clothes, home furnishing, and the list never ends. One-click and your desired product is right outside your door, the next day, and if you are lucky enough, within hours. By dint of E-commerce websites like Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal, and other similar ones, general needs and luxurious desires are fulfilled effortlessly. Looks like a definite boon, but as a matter of fact, comes with a hidden threat of a curse. The internet world is not so glorious especially at the times where criminal masterminds exist. Marketers cannot simply avoid the fear of domain infringement. In plain terms, the practice involves domain name registrations with the primary intention of portraying themselves as a popular website to meet lucrative ends. Last month, the Delhi High Court passed an order in favor of Snapdeal when the E-commerce giant faced a similar challenge.

A few months ago, a New Delhi-headquartered e-commerce company approached the High Court of Delhi with a complaint concerning as many as 50 dishonest websites including, Snapdeallucky-draws.org.in, domain registration entities including GoDaddy LLC, Wild West Domain LLC, and Endurance Domain Technology LLC, amongst other defendants. The 10-year website alleged that the defendants were making use of Snapdeal’s nationally renowned trademark.

The complaint mentioned, defendants were “inter alia degrading its goodwill and infringing its registered trademark by offering fraudulent prize schemes, lotteries, and lucky draws in a manner which tends to portray that they either emanate from it or are connected with it.” Snapdeal added that such action hampers its commercial interest and well-established goodwill amongst millions of users. Not just that, the rogue websites are in a way deceiving and defrauding gullible customers into believing that there exists an association between them.

On July 20th, the matter was heard by Hon’ble Mr. Justice Rajiv Shakdher of the Delhi High Court via video-conferencing. The Court fully supported the arguments presented by Snapdeal and observed that such offerings by infringing websites shall most likely deceive the customers into falsely believing that it is an initiation by Snapdeal.

“The defendants are injuncted from carrying on their activities either under the plaintiff’s trademark or any other trademark which is deceptively similar to the plaintiff’s trademark. Furthermore, defendant numbers 51 to 60, who are the domain registrars, are directed to suspend/block the domain names of those defendants which are registered with them,” the Court decided.

On request, the Court further awarded liberty to Snapdeal to array such websites without filing a fresh action. It was ordered, “Having regard to the enormity of the damage caused by such like schemes by rogue websites, I am inclined to grant such liberty, leave is given to the plaintiff to approach this Court to array another rogue website(s) who carry on similar activities, albeit illegally, as and when the same comes to its notice.”

The present matter is renotified for hearing on 4th September. 

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