SC notice to Google, others restrains rivals from displaying infringing ads

A bench headed by Chief Justice Altamas Kabir while issuing notices to People Interactive (Shaadi.com), Times Business Solutions (SimplyMarry), and Info Edge (JeevanSathi) also restrained the competitors from displaying advertisements with keywords that infringed Consim’s trademark in Google’s AdWords program.

The effect is that text ads of rival matrimony sites would not be displayed if a user enters the search keywords bharat matrimony or tamil matrimony, in addition to bharatmatrimony.

Challenging the Madras High Court judgment that refused to restrain Google and the three sites from displaying such pop-ups whenever ‘BharatMatrimony’ was keyed in during Google search, Consim senior counsel A Sundaram and counsel KV Mohan submitted that by permitting the competitors to display their websites, Google was infringing the trademark rights of the company and capitalising on its goodwill and reputation. Consim argued that competing websites were buying up keywords on Google’s Adwords program so that their site showed up when people search for Bharat matrimony.

Google in its cross-appeal said that ‘Bharat’ and ‘matrimony’ were two independent words and Bharatmatrimony could not claim any trademark right. The search engine giant has cited various examples that whenever such common words were used in Google, similar related sites also would be displayed.

Senior counsel Mukul Rohtagi, appearing for Google, said the names of Shaadi.com, People Interactive, Jeevansathi Internet Services and Times Business Solutions would be

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