Google moves Delhi HC against trademark infringement ruling in Hindware AdWords case

Google approached the Delhi High Court against a ruling holding it liable for trademark infringement over Hindware keywords in its AdWords programme. The court issued notice to Hindware and will hear Google's appeal against the ₹30 lakh damages order on July 24

New Delhi: Tech giant Google on Friday moved the Delhi High Court against an order holding it guilty of trademark infringement over the use of sanitaryware brand Hindware’s mark as keywords for its AdWords programme.

A bench of justices V Kameswar Rao and Manmeet P S Arora issued notice to Hindware on Google’s appeal against a single judge’s May 22 decision, which also directed the platform to pay Rs 30 lakh as damages, and listed the matter for hearing on July 24.

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Refusing to interfere with the judgement at this stage, the bench said, “We will have it on July 24 for final disposal.” Senior advocate Abhishek Singhvi appeared for the appellant and sought interim stay of the direction to pay damages.

He argued that the single judge’s judgement was not in line with the earlier decisions and globally acceptable practices in the field. On May 22, the single judge had directed Google to pay Rs 30 lakh as damages to Hindware for using its trademark as keywords for its AdWords Programme.

While dealing with two lawsuits by Hindware Ltd, the single judge had held that the use of trademarks as keywords amounted to unfair advantage under the Trademarks Act and restrained Google LLC and Google India from using ‘Hindware’ or ‘Hindware Sanitaryware’, ‘Hindware Sanitar’ or ‘Hindware Sanitaryware India’ as part of advertising keywords for its platform.

The single-judge bench had ruled that by enabling direct competitors to intercept users when they expressed an interest in the plaintiff’s mark, Google indulged in an “unfair practice” and also sought to exploit the distinctive character or repute of the plaintiff’s well-known trademark to benefit its own advertising business.

It said no prior consent or approval was admittedly sought by Google from the plaintiff for offering, suggesting and selling its registered trademark to other entities pursuant to the AdWords programme.
Google’s act of auctioning and selling the use of the plaintiff’s trademark as a keyword to direct competitors was not exempted under Section 79(1) of the IT Act, which grants intermediaries a safe harbour from legal liability, it had further held.