Flipkart sends legal notice to Hyderabad blogger alleging trademark infringement

BENGALURU: Ecommerce major Flipkart has threatened to sue a Hyderabad-based blogger, alleging that he has infringed on the company’s trademark and logo by using it to register a domain name and mislead users. Legal firm Srikrishna & Associates sent a notice to blogger Amit Bhawani on August 21, saying that the blogger had used Flipkart’s logo and trademark illegally and it could create confusion among clients.

“The use by any other entity of the trademark/service market ‘Flipkart’ or any deceptively similar variant thereof, apart from amounting to infringement of our clients registered trademark, would also amount to passing off,” the notice said.

Bhawani had registered a domain name called ‘amazonvsflipkart.com’ to host a survey comparing the two companies on various parameters such as overall service and website interface. “Instead of sending a legal notice, if they’d just sent a friendly mail, I would have taken it down,” Bhawani told ET. He has taken the month-old site down and offered to hand over the domain to Flipkart.

Amazon was leading in the survey until last week when his servers came under attack and went down, he said. Later, he noticed that Flipkart had taken a lead over Amazon in the survey, he said.

A Flipkart spokesperson said: “We respect the right to freedom of speech and endeavor to carry out research and polls. However, the legal notice was issued in the interest of safeguarding our goodwill, brand and trademarks.

We contend that the language employed in the said notice was stronger than intended, and will make necessary corrections for any future communication. Pursuant to our notice, the offending trademark infringement has been taken down. In view of the above, our communication has now become irrelevant.”