Update: Consim info CEO, Murugavel Janakiraman in a telephonic conversation notified us that the company has got interim injunction (Order to hold action against defendant) in this trademark infringement case. He has also seconded our thought that the litigation was to stop any such wrong-doing’s in future rather than to extract any big compensation from the companies. The company has also clarified that they have challenged only the matrimonial searches and as such has no plans to go for similar things to protect its other portals like Clickjobs, Indialist.
The case is also a precedence to stop any such practices as Bharatmatrimony is going for expansion in many regional centric portal like patelmatrimony, agarwalmatrimony etc. He also sounded gung ho about the online matrimonial business although refused to give any financial information regarding the company.
Google makes pots of money from its Adwords programme but that cash cow is now bringing litigations at its doorsteps. In a litigation which could have drastic effect on its Adwords program in India and also open up a series of similar cases in future, Consiminfo has sued Google India for allowing competitive ads on trademark searches on its search engine.
According to Business Standard, holding a copy of petition, Consiminfo has said, “We had trademarked www.tamilmatrimony.com, www.telugumatrimony.com, www.bharatmatrimony.com,www.bengalimatrimony.com, www.muslimmatrimony.com. Hence, Google should not allow ads on those trademarks”.
Consim has also asked the court to “give a permanent injunction restraining Google from infringing and/or enabling others to infringe plaintiff’s registered trademarks. Google should not allow competition to bid on trademarks of BharatMatrimony and should not allow company’s competition to use trademark as their heading”.
The case is not just related to matrimony domain names but also to the specific matrimony keywords related to matrimonial business owned by Consiminfo. Thus Consim wants its competitors and specially Google in general to even avoid competitive advertising for terms like ‘Tamil matrimony’, ‘Telegu matrimony’, etc by asking Google to remove the alleged terms from its key words suggestion tool programme.
Consim suing Other matrimonial Sites too
Moneycontrol has reported that Consiminfo has sued not just Google but 3 other matrimonial sites. We have contacted Consim to ask for Clarification in this regards and also to know whether they have sued any other competitior in other segments like Job, Finance, etc. The queries were unanswered before publishing this article.
The company in the meanwhile has asked Google and other respondents, including People Interactive Pvt Ltd,Jeevansathi Internet Services Pvt Ltd and Times Business Solutions Ltd, to surrender all compact discs, master copies, advertising materials, pamphlets, brochures, etc, which bear Consim’s trademarks and/or any other variants to the company.
The litigation is asking for a paltry compensation of just 10.5 lakh,this reflects that Consiminfo just wants to avoid any competitive advertising in future.
Google in the meanwhile has avoided making any comments on the case.
Is it a wise move?
Google in the past has faced many similar cases related to trademark infringement arising from competitive advertising. The company avoids any such cases as and when it is notified of such infringements by taking down the bidding from trademark words.
This is the reason you won’t find any competitive ads on terms like ‘Naukri’, ‘techcrunch’, ‘Twitter’ or even ‘Bing’ for that matter. Google although allows ads for its own terms like ‘adsense’, ‘adwords’. This case could be dubbed a little different from other cases as Google is sued not just for competitive words but domain name searches too.
The important thing to notice is Consiminfo too has been dabbling with such activities and its litigation could only bring counter attacks on its own practice.
The question also arises if Consim notified Google well in advance regarding the infringements or directly took the litigation way to fight its case. Google could be seriously hold responsible for trademark infringement by law of land if they were notified for any such wrong-doings very well in advance by the complainant (in this case Consiminfo).
This move by Consiminfo reflects the debacle of Online matrimony business as it has only sued matrimonial sites not any other competitors for its ClickJobs or other array of portals. Thus this move could very well be termed as face saving measures by the management and also signals the tough time ahead for Online Matrimonial Segment.
