Delhi High Court passes ex-parte order protecting trademark 'Apna' in suit against fraudulent websites

The Delhi High Court recently passed an ex-parte order protecting the trademark Apna from being used by fraudulent job-search websites. [Apnatime Tech Pvt. Ltd. and Anr. vs Anik Dev Nath & Ors.].Justice Jyoti Singh held that there was a prima facie case for grant of ex parte ad-interim injunction and that the balance of convenience was in favour of the plaintiffs, Apnatime Tech Pvt. Ltd..The plaintiff, which help people find jobs on their platform under the name www.apna.co and mobile application 'ApnaJob Search', had received a complaint from a customer that she had been duped of a large sum of money by registering on a website www.apnajobs.in. According to the plaintiff, the website was allegedly a mirror copy of their website, used an identical logo, and approached the customers impersonating them. Further, it was claimed that this website was taken down in September 2022 and another website cropped up immediately thereafter, www.apnajobs.org, which had the same modus operandi as that of the previous website and was impersonating them. Consequently, the plaintiff filed the suit for infringement of copyright, passing off, suspension of the website, damages etc. against the defendants before the Court..Upon holding that the balance in convenience was in favour of Apnatime Tech, the Court restrained the defendant, one Anik Dev Nath, from using the plaintiff's website layout, user interface, arrangement, and/or any other artistic work in a manner that may amount to infringement of copyright of plaintiff’ work.The Court also restrained the said defendant from using the mark 'Apna' with or without the prefix 'Jobs', as a trademark, trade name or domain name that may amount to passing off his services and businesses as those of the plaintiff.The Court further directed the domain name registrars to suspend domain names www.apnajobs.in and www.apnajobs.org and maintain status quo of the domain names. The Court also directed the Department of Telecommunications and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to issue notifications calling upon various internet and telecom service providers registered under them to block access to the domain names www.apnajobs.in and www.apnajobs.org..Advocates Diva Arora and Devyani Nath from Fidus Law Chambers appeared for the plaintiff..[Read Order]