December 18, 2018:
On Tuesday, online travel aggregator MakeMyTrip has taken five travel & tourism websites, including MakeMyYatra, MakeMyJourney, Make My Happy Journey, Pick My Trip & Superb My Trip, to court for allegedly using similar sounding names.
The Nasdaq-listed MakeMyTrip alleged that these companies are not only using “deceptively similar sounding names” but some of them have also copied its logo.
In the petitions in the Delhi High Court, MakeMyTrip said it has spent almost 46% of its revenue, or ₹ 1,264 crore, (out of total revenue of ₹2,759 crore in fiscal year 2017-18) on advertising and marketing the MakeMyTrip brand in FY 2017-18.
Advertising executives said that spending that kind of percentage of revenue on advertising and marketing is really on the higher side, even by e-commerce standards, a sector that is known for splurging on promotional activities.
Similarly, India’s largest e-commerce company Flipkart had spent 32% of its annual revenue in fiscal year ending March 2017 on advertising and marketing its brand.
While the cases are pending, the Delhi High Court issued interim injunctions against a few websites including Pick-MyTrip.in.
“Till further orders, the defendant, its partner, directors, shareholders or proprietors as the case may be, its assigns in business, franchisees, affiliates, subsidiaries, licencees and agents are restrained from using in manner whatsoever, selling, offering for sale, advertising directly or indirectly dealing in any products or services under the infringing marks, namely PickMyTrip (word per se),” the court said in an interim order passed on Oct 31.
A similar order was also passed by the Delhi court against MakeMyYatra on Dec 5.
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