Madras High Court: G. Jayachandran, J., decided a matter with regard to infringing the registered trademark BHARATMATRIMONY.
Present suit was filed for injunction restraining the defendant, men and agent from infringing the plaintiff’s registered trademark BHARATMATRIMONY and its variant.
Plaintiff’s company was registered in using the internet as a platform for matrimonial alliance and have been in business since 2001.
Plaintiff enjoys tremendous goodwill throughout India and abroad. The internet business of the plaintiff started in the year 1997, having its domain name as www.bharatmatrimony.com. Plaintiff registered several other domain names based on language and religion to cater for the needs of the regional customer.
In order to protect the mark and exclusively enjoy the plaintiff registered the domain name www.bharatmatrimony.com
Further, it was stated that, in order to take advantage of the reputation and wide acceptance by the public, the defendant herein had adopted the identical mark of the plaintiff for its online business. The said adoption www.bharatmatrimony.org was with intention to ride its goodwill and reputation and was not honest, but with malafide intention to cause deception and confusion to the users in order to gain illicit benefit.
Adding to the above it was stated that when the plaintiff came to know this unauthorized use and wrongful exploitation the name used for the plaintiff’s trademark by the defendant, notice was served on the defendant to cease and deceit from adopting the mark which was identical that of the plaintiff’s trademark BHARATMATRIMONY.
Cause of filing the suit
Since the defendant failed to restrain itself from deceptively, illegally adopting the plaintiff’s trademark, the present suit was filed.
This Court had granted interim injunction being prima facie satisfied about the alleged copyright infringement by respondent/defendant.
High Court was satisfied that the user name BHARATMATRIMONY was being used by the plaintiff since 1997 and the domain name www.bharatmatrimony.com since 1999 had been dishonestly adopted by the defendant for its domain name, while its trade name is www.siliconinfo.com. On serving cease and deceit notice, the defendant did not respond to justify the adoption of the domain name.
Court expressed that defendant adopted the domain name www.bharatmatrimony.org which was squarely prohibited under Section 29 of the Trademark Act as infringement. Under Section 29(3), if the identical mark used for identical service, the Court shall presume the infringement.
Present matter is a case where the identical mark for identical service is adopted by the defendant and no justification came forward from the defendant, despite affording opportunity.
Therefore, the present suit was allowed in respect of the injunction relief against infringement.
Therefore the plaintiff was entitled to the following reliefs:
(a). A permanent injunction restraining the defendant, by themselves, their directors, partners, men, servants, agents, broadcasters, representatives, advertisers, franchisees, licensees and/or all other persons acting on their behalf from in any manner infringing and/or enabling others to infringe plaintiff’s registered trademarks BHARATMATRIMONY and/or its variants by using the identical trademark BHARATMATRIMONY as part of the Domain name or in any other manner whatsoever;
(b). A permanent injunction restraining the defendant, by themselves, their directors, partners, men, servants, agents, broadcasters, representatives, advertisers, franchisees, licensees and/or all other persons acting on their behalf from in any manner diverting the plaintiff’s business to themselves by using Google’s search engine in which the plaintiff’s trademark BHARATMATRIONY and domain name BHARATMATRIONY. ORG and/or its variants, by using as domain name and/or as meta tags and thereby passing off the business and services of the defendant as that of the plaintiff or in any other manner whatsoever;
(c). A permanent injunction restraining the defendant, themselves, their partners, successors-in-business, servants, agents, representatives, assigns and all other persons claiming under them and through them from using or redirecting to the domain name www.bharatmatrimony.org or any other domain name that is identical and/or deceptively similar to that of the plaintiff’s domain name www.bharatmatrimony.com in any manner whatsoever;
(d). The defendant be directed to surrender to the plaintiff for destruction all compact discs, master copy, advertising materials, pamphlets, brochures, etc. which bears the plaintiff’s registered trademarks and/or any other variants which is phonetically and/or deceptively identical and/or similar to the plaintiff’s registered trademarks or in any other form whatsoever.
[Matrimony.com Ltd. v. Silicon Valley Infomedia (P) Ltd., 2021 SCC OnLine Mad 5463, decided on 6-10-2021]
Advocates who appeared in this case:
For Plaintiff: Mr Arun C. Mohan
For Defendant: No appearance
