Delhi HC Restrains Unknown Persons From Infringing Brokerage Firm Upstox's Trademark
The Delhi High Court has granted an interim injunction against unknown parties restraining them from infringement of trademark of Upstox, an online brokerage company.
The Court was hearing a suit by the holding company of Upstox seeking permanent injunction restraining infringement of trademarks, word mark and copyright and so on of the company against various defendants, some of who remain unknown.
A Single-Judge Bench of Justice Mini Pushkarna said, "[T]he plaintiff has demonstrated a prima facie case for grant of injunction and in case no ex-parte ad-interim injunction is granted, the plaintiff will suffer an irreparable loss. Further, the balance of convenience also lies in favour of the plaintiff and against the defendants."
Senior Advocate Balbir Singh appreared for RKSV Securities India Pvt. Ltd. and Advocate Sarfaraz Khan appeared for one of the Respondents.
It was submitted that the plaintiff, along with its group companies, owns and operates online portals which are being used by various retail investors in India for carrying out trading activity in the stock market and other allied investment and financial activities. The activities that it undertakes are regulated by the Securities and Exchange Board of India, Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority and the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India, it was submitted.
The Court was told that for the past several months, the plaintiff has been receiving complaints about several domain names, WhatsApp groups, and Telegram groups that have been portraying themselves as the plaintiff company and its subsidiary and have committed fraud by duping money from several clients and users of the plaintiff company by misusing the brand, logo, word mark and the copyright of the plaintiff.
The plaintiff said it got cognizant of the abuse of its trademark and the trade name when it started to receive multiple complaints on its email from various stakeholders.
It was claimed that the infringement is not only causing damage to the plaintiff, but is also concerning the security and privacy of its domain name, trade name and logo. The Court was shown various documents, where the mark of the plaintiff was used by the defendants in an unauthorised manner, in order to dupe and fraud the people.
The Court, noting that a prima facie case has been made out to grant ex-parte injunction, issued directions applicable till the next date of hearing. These include a direction to an unknown defendant to be "restrained from infringing the plaintiff’s registered UPSTOX trademarks, word marks, and/or any other deceptively similar variant/s thereof, in any manner." The Court also directed certain domain registrars to suspend certain domain names and also to disclose the know-your-customer documents of registrants.
Cause Title: RKSV Securities India Pvt. Ltd. v. John Does [CS(COMM) 1215/2024]
Appearance:
Petitioner: Senior Advocate Balbir Singh, Advocates P. Devnath, Abhishek Anand, Rahul Kumar, Karan Sachdev and Monica Benjamin
Respondent: Advocates Sarfaraz Khan, Mriza Amir Baig and Mr. Abdul Wahid, Sumit Nagpal, Laavanya Kaushik, Aahana Sood, Neel Mason, Ekta Sharma, Pragya Jain and Surabhi Katare
Click here to read/download the Order
