Delhi High Court: Plaintiffs allege that Defendant 1 was perpetrating fraud on the public by creating a false association with them, resulting in grave financial losses to the public. Sanjeev Narula, J., restrained Defendant 1, and all persons acting on their behalf, from using plaintiffs’ trade marks or logos, including, ‘RAZORPAY’, 
or 
and/or any deceptive variants thereof which were identical and/or similar to plaintiffs’ “Razor” trade marks in any manner, thereby amounting to infringement or passing off of plaintiffs’ trade marks.
Background
Plaintiffs were payment gateway service providers, specializing in developing application programme interface for a variety of financial products and other digital financial services, such as payment and payroll processing. Plaintiff 1, Razorpay Software (P) Ltd., was incorporated in 2013, and Plaintiff 2, its group company, was established in 2014 and since 2013, plaintiffs were offering a fast, affordable, and secure way for end-to-end online payments, under the trade mark ‘RAZORPAY’.
Plaintiff 2 obtained registrations for the trade marks ‘RAZORPAY’, ‘RAZORPAY X’, ‘RAZORPAY CAPITAL’, 
, 
, 
, 
and several other formative variants thereof, in classes 9, 35, 36, 38 and 42, in respect of electronic payment and financial transaction services, design and development of computer hardware, business administration, and telecommunications. Plaintiffs jointly operated the domain name “www.razorpay.com”, which was registered in the name of Plaintiff 2.
In January 2024, plaintiffs received multiple complaints against a financial scam being operated by Defendant 1 on the pretext of providing the consumers a job with plaintiffs. As per the account of one of the aggrieved persons, the modus operandi of Defendant 1 was that an unsuspecting consumer was first approached on WhatsApp platform by Defendant 1, falsely representing themselves as a recruiter of “Razor Company Ltd.” and offering a part-time job with the said company for extra income. As per the information available on the website of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, no such company existed.
During the investigation, plaintiffs received information regarding operation of the website “https://www.razorrq.vip/” that incorporated ‘RAZOR’ in the domain name and displayed the trade marks 
, 
, and 
on the webpage, which were identical/deceptively similar to plaintiffs’ ‘Razor’ marks. Even the user interface of plaintiffs’ original website was imitated on this domain name. Plaintiffs also found the domain names “https://www.razorrw.vip”, “http://razorrm.vip/”, and “http://razorrt.vip”, with similar design and manner of use of plaintiffs’ trade marks, however, the same were currently inoperative.
Analysis, Law, and Decision
The Court opined that prima facie Defendant 1 was unauthorizedly using plaintiffs’ trade mark “RAZORPAY”/
or parts thereof 
in conjunction with their mark “RAZORPAY”, to lure members of the public into remitting significant amounts of money on the pretext of securing a job with plaintiffs and earning returns. Defendant 1 was misrepresenting themselves as being employed or associated with plaintiffs and targeting unwary persons.
The Court noted that to render an impression of authenticity, Defendant 1 was also circulating a forged Guarantee Agreement that mentioned plaintiffs’ trade marks, trade name, registered address, Corporate Identity Number, and signatures of their founder. The impugned domain names, Telegram channels, and WhatsApp accounts used the registered Razor marks without plaintiff’s consent and had even emulated the make and design of plaintiffs’ website, which further accentuated the likelihood of confusion among the target public.
Thus, the Court thus passed the following directions:
-
Defendant 1, and all persons acting on their behalf, were restrained from using plaintiffs’ trade marks or logos, including, “RAZORPAY”,
or 
and/or any deceptive variants thereof which were identical and/or similar to plaintiffs’ “Razor” trade marks in any manner, thereby amounting to infringement or passing off of plaintiffs’ trade marks. -
Defendants 2 to 5, Domain Name Registrars were directed to block/suspend access to the respective domain names.
-
Defendant 7, Meta Platforms INC, was directed to block/remove the Facebook pages available at various URLs.
-
Defendants 9 and 10, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and Department of Telecommunications and Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, respectively were directed to issue necessary directions to the telecom service providers and internet service providers to block websites hosted on the impugned domain names.
-
Defendant 6, WhatsApp LLC, and Defendant 8, Telegram FZ-LLC were directed to block/delete unauthorized WhatsApp accounts and Telegram channels/groups, respectively.
The matter would be re-notified on 3-9-2024.
[Razorpay Software (P) Ltd. v. John Doe, 2024 SCC OnLine Del 2496, Order dated 2-4-2024]
Advocates who appeared in this case :
For the Plaintiffs: Sneha Jain, Yatinder Garg, Sanidhya Maheshwari, Rimjhim Tiwari, Advocates
For the Defendants: Nidhi Raman, CGSC; Anushka Sharda, Madhav Khosla, Smriti Nair, Zubin Singh, Advocates
