Delhi High Court Passes John Doe Order, Restrains Infringement Of 'Tata' Trademarks

The Delhi High Court has passed a john doe order restraining the infringement of “Tata” trademarks, observing that repeated instances of duping of customers had occurred through domains that have claimed to offer fake dealerships or distributorships.

Justice Amit Bansal said that the presence of trademark TATA along-with the word “dealerships” or “distributorships” or “consumer” had led innocent public to believe that they were official TATA websites and part with their hard-earned money.

“Given that the Plaintiff has specifically pleaded how the defendants have smoothly transitioned from one fraudulent website to another every time a victim got suspicious, it is important to pass an order that comprehensively safeguards such proliferation in the future,” the Court said.

The suit, filed by Tata Sons Private Limited, said that the defendants were involved in duping general members of the public by misusing the' 'TATA' trademarks and impersonating the its employees and representatives.

It was alleged that the defendants would initially ask the victim to make the first payment of around Rs. 25,000 as 'Registration fee', and upon having done so, they would ask the victim for payment of additional sums of money, which would run into lakhs under the impression that the victims are paying for Agreement Deposit', 'Product Deposit', 'NOC Deposit', 'Travel' and 'Renovation & Equipment Deposit', 'Second Stock Purchase Deposit', etc.

It was submitted that once all the payments were made by the victims, the defendants would stop responding to the victims, which was when the victims would realise that they had been duped.

In its interim order, the Court directed the Domain Name Registrars to suspend and lock the domain names of the defendants and also directed the internet service providers to block their phone numbers.

It further directed the banks to suspend the UPI IDs and the bank accounts associated with the defendants.

“In the event the plaintiff comes across domain names in the future which contain the trademark 'TATA' in conjunction with one of more of the words “consumer”, “franchise”, “franchisee”, “distributor”, “distributorship”, “dealership”, “dealer”, the plaintiff are permitted to send a written communication to the relevant Domain Name Registrar, listing out the said domain name and drawing attention to this order and seek locking and suspension of such websites,” the Court said.

Title: TATA SONS PRIVATE LIMITED AND ANR v. JOHN DOE AND ORS

Click here to read order