Delhi High Court orders suspension of 125 websites using Jio trademark for lottery, gaming services

The Delhi High Court has ordered the suspension of 125 websites and domain names which were misusing Reliance Industries Limited's (RIL) registered Jio trademark to offer lottery, gaming and allied services [Reliance Industries Limited v. Rahul Meena & Ors.].

Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav passed the interim order on October 7 after finding that the legal test for identifying rogue websites was prima facie satisfied.

The Court also directed Google to remove a webpage hosted on its Blogger platform that allegedly infringed the Jio trademark.

The directions were passed in a trademark infringement suit filed by Reliance Industries against Rahul Meena and several other defendants, including domain name registrars, Google, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the Department of Telecommunications.

Reliance Industries claimed exclusive statutory and common law rights over the registered Jio trademark and alleged that several websites were unlawfully incorporating the mark into their domain names.

The disputed websites included jiolotteryi.com, jiolotterylogin.com, jiolotterygame.com, jiolottery.club and jiolottery.store.

According to the company, the websites used marks such as JIO, JIO LOTTERY and JIO LOTTERY GAME in connection with lottery, gaming, payment-related and allied services.

It argued that these marks were identical or deceptively similar to its registered trademarks and were likely to cause confusion and deception among consumers.

After examining the websites and their contents, the Court found that they prima facie satisfied the test of rogue websites laid down in the Delhi High Court's 2019 judgment in UTV Software Communication Ltd. v. 1337X.to.

The Court reproduced portions of that judgment explaining that the determination of whether a website is rogue must be qualitative rather than quantitative.

Under this approach, courts examine the primary purpose and effect of a website rather than merely calculating the proportion of infringing material hosted on it.

The judgment also recognised that blocking individual URLs may be insufficient because operators of rogue websites can easily change their URLs to circumvent restrictions.

Applying this principle, Justice Kaurav restrained Meena from registering, operating, controlling, promoting or otherwise using domain names and marks identical or deceptively similar to Jio.

The Court further directed the domain name registrars arrayed as defendants to suspend the websites and accounts identified in the annexure to its order until further directions.

The annexure identified 126 web addresses, including mirror websites, redirecting websites and websites with similar structures. Of these, 125 were covered by the suspension direction, while a separate takedown direction was issued for a Blogger webpage.

The list included domain names registered or hosted through NameCheap, GoDaddy, Dynadot, Spaceship and other service providers.

The Court granted Reliance Industries exemption from mandatory pre-institution mediation under the Commercial Courts Act, considering the urgency of the interim relief sought.

It issued summons in the suit and listed the interim application for further consideration on November 30.

Advocates Ankit Sahni, Chirag Ahluwalia and Mohit represented Reliance Industries.

Advocates Aditya Gupta and Angela Arora appeared for Google.

Standing Counsel Shivanshu Bhardwaj, along with Government Pleader Manish Rawat represented the Union government authorities.

[Read Order]