Google challenges Delhi HC ruling on Hindware dispute; Says ruling diverges from established legal precedents in India

New Delhi|Chennai: Google has challenged the Delhi High Court's recent ruling in the trademark dispute involving Hindware, arguing the judgment departs from established legal precedent governing keyword advertising in India.

"We are appealing the Delhi High Court's order, which diverges from established legal precedents in India," a Google spokesperson confirmed to ET. "Our ads policies reflect standard practices that enable competition and give consumers more choices. We look forward to presenting our position to the court."

The company has moved the division bench of the Delhi High Court against its single judge bench ruling that the search engine giant infringed other companies' trademark through its Google Ads programme. The division bench comprising Justice V Kameswar Rao and Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora is likely to hear the Google's appeal on Friday.


The single judge bench had asked Google to pay damages to Hindware, whose trademark the search engine giant had sold to the competitors so that the latter's website could appear first when searching for Hindware name.

Some sources said that allowing competitor keyword bidding is a 'standard global advertising practice' because it gives smaller businesses a tool to present alternative choices to consumers. They added that Google's policy of not restricting keyword bidding on all terms, irrespective of their trademark status, is longstanding and compliant with trademark laws.

Further, the company said that while this appeal is being pursued, Google has already implemented specific blocking actions required by the legal proceedings, without impacting any other advertiser campaigns and that their ads policies remain unchanged.

Justice Mini Pushkarna, in a judgement on May 22, observed that Google cannot be permitted to shrug off responsibility by making available a tool that leads to infringement, and then claim that the said tool was not mandatory. The court said the practice constituted a trademark infringement and permanently restrained the tech giant from using Hindware or its variations as keywords in the programme.

In this specific instance, the company that owns the brand had moved the court against Google allowing others to use Hindware. This allowed searches for the name to throw up links to third parties that had won the right to use it through the auction process.

Justice Pushkarna had permanently restrained Google from using Hindware's trademark or any its combination as part of advertising keywords in its Google Ads programme, which amounted to infringement.