The Delhi High Court recently ordered the suspension of a website www.khadiorganic.com in a trademark infringement suit against it for selling Ram Mandir Prasad under the Khadi Organic mark.
The High Court observed that the Khadi and Village Industries Commission had successfully presented a prima facie case. Notably, without the grant of an ex-parte interim injunction, the Commission would suffer irreparable losses and the balance of convenience favoured the Commission over the website.
A single-judge bench of Justice Sanjeev Narula in its order stated that it appeared that the website was attempting to monopolise the consecration event by preying on the public’s religious beliefs, devotion and deceiving them into transferring money to website owners using goodwill of the plaintiff Khadi and Village Industries Commission.
The court in its prima facie opinion observed that the marks of Khadi organic, are deceptively similar to the plaintiff’s Khadi mark. Thereafter, it restrained the owners of the website from manufacturing, selling, exporting, advertising, any goods and services under the mark Khadi Organic which is identical or deceptively similar to Plaintiff’s registered KHADI marks, resulting in infringement of the commission’s mark.
Justice Narula further directed to suspend the operation of the domain name registered and also to maintain status quo with regards to the ownership of the said domain name. The court also ordered the removal of social media pages.
The suit lodged through advocate Shwetasree Majumder stated that the owners of the rogue website could not misappropriate the Khadi mark and render a false impression that Khadi and Village Industries Commission, were affiliated with the Shri Rambhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust, which organised the consecration ceremony.
It further stated that the Khadi Organic’s owner, Ashish Singh, in the wake of several customers calling the website a scam, had hosted a live question and answer session on its YouTube channel wherein he clarified that the distribution of so-called prasad was a private initiative and was not being overseen by Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust. It added that Singh in the session had also stated that the website till January 14, had received orders of nearly Rs.20 lakh.
Consecutively, the high court issued a summons on the commission’s lawsuit as well as a notice in its application for interim relief and listed the matter for hearing on May 27.