Delhi High Court: The present suit was filed by the plaintiffs seeking relief of permanent injunction restraining the defendants from infringing their marks ‘TATA’ and ‘TATA PAYMENTS’ on their website, ‘https://www.tatapayment.net/’ (‘impugned website’). A Single Judge Bench of Tejas Karia, J., held that a prima facie case was made out on behalf of the plaintiffs, and thus granted an ad interim ex parte injunction in favour of plaintiffs restraining Defendant 1 and its affiliates from using the marks ‘TATA’ or ‘TATA PAYMENTS’ or any deceptively similar variations across all platforms. The Court directed Defendant 2-Cloudfare Inc to block the impugned website and file an affidavit to share complete details concerning the name, contact details, mode of payment, KYC details and IP address details used by the registrants of the impugned website. Further, Defendant 3-Telegram was ordered to temporarily block infringing accounts.
Background:
The plaintiffs were part of the TATA Group of Companies, with Plaintiff 1 being a private limited company incorporated in India in 1917 and the registered proprietor of numerous TATA formative trade marks, with the earliest dating back to 1942. Plaintiffs 1 held over 1,496 trade mark registrations and more than 2,000 ‘TATA’ formative domains, including ‘tata.com’ registered in 1996. Plaintiff 2, a public limited company and wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Digital Private Limited, was engaged in financial services and held a Payment Aggregator (PA) license issued by the RBI on 1-1-2024 to process e-commerce transactions and act as a merchant payment service provider. It also owned the domain ‘tatapayments.com’, registered on 15-5-2019.
In July 2025, the plaintiffs had discovered Defendant 1’s impugned website, which offered digital payment services while wholly incorporating the plaintiffs’ trade marks. The plaintiff’s submitted that domain’s registrant details were masked, but it displayed contact information including an inactive mobile number and two email addresses (support@tatapayment.net and privacy@tatapayment.net), as well as Telegram accounts under the username ‘tatatatapay’ and a group ‘yinduzhifu41’, which contained Chinese text and appeared to facilitate the establishment of overseas payment systems under the name ‘TATA Payment System for Rent’.
The plaintiffs’ contended that its name and marks were used by Defendant 1 with the clear intent to defraud and deceive the public by falsely claiming to offer digital payment services for businesses and individuals across India and accepting and managing payments under the marks ‘TATA’ or ‘TATA PAYMENTS’ through the impugned website and telegram accounts/groups/channels. The unauthorized actions of Defendant 1, would give rise to substantial confusion, leading individuals to falsely believe that the impugned website and the Telegram Accounts/groups/channel were authorized, associated, and affiliated with the plaintiffs. It was further submitted that Defendant 1 had attempted to take unfair advantage of the reputation and goodwill of the marks ‘TATA’ or ‘TATA PAYMENTS’. The plaintiffs thus filed the present suit before the Court.
Case Analysis and Decision:
The Court observed that based on pleadings and documents on record, a prima facie case was made out on behalf of the plaintiffs, for grant of an ex-parte ad-interim injunction. Further, the balance of convenience was in favour of the plaintiffs and against Defendant 1, and irreparable injury would be caused to the plaintiffs if an ex-parte ad- interim injunction was not granted.
The Court thus restrained Defendant 1, by themselves/itself, their/its proprietors, directors, promoters, affiliates, representatives, partners, servants, agents, assigns and all those acting in concert with or claiming under or through it/them or otherwise howsoever, from directly or indirectly using the name ‘TATA’ and ‘TATA PAYMENTS’ and/or any deceptively similar variation thereof in relation to its business, products, services as a trade mark or as part of its trade name, trade style, corporate name, store name, domain name, web address, email address, social media handle, branding products, stationery and/or in any other manner whatsoever so as to infringe, pass off and/or dilute the registered trade marks of the plaintiffs.
Further, Defendant 2 was directed to block access and suspend registration of the impugned website, or such other URLs that might subsequently be notified by the plaintiffs for infringing its exclusive rights. Defendant 2 was also directed to file affidavit(s) to provide the complete details concerning the name, contact details, mode of payment, KYC details and IP address used by the registrants of the impugned website.
Further, Defendant 3 was directed to file in a sealed cover/password protected document, the IP addresses from which the Telegram accounts infringing trade marks were operated, details concerning the name, contact details, mode of payment and KYC details of such accounts with a copy to the plaintiffs within four weeks and to temporarily block such Telegram accounts/channels/groups. The Court also stated that the plaintiffs were at the liberty to share with Defendant 3 any such accounts/groups/channels resembling the nature of the ‘TATA’ or ‘TATA PAYMENTS’ marks who shall thereafter remove/block access thereto without approaching the Court.
The matter would next be listed on 24-11-2025.
[Tata Sons (P) Ltd. v. John Doe, 2025 SCC OnLine Del 5733, decided on 11-8-2025]
Advocates who appeared in this case :
For the Plaintiffs: Shwetasree Majumder, Prithvi Singh, Rohan Seth, Prithvi Gulati, Ritwik Marwaha and Vanshika Singh, Advocates.
For the Defendants: Manisha Agrawal Narain, CGSC with Nipun Jain, Anushka Sharda, Advocates
