Bombay High Court: The instant interim application was filed by Reliance Industries Limited (plaintiff), for the passing off and infringement of the trade mark ‘JIO’ and the domain name www.jiocabs.com.
A Single Judge Bench of Somasekhar Sundaresan, J., held that ‘JIO’ was a well-known trade mark, and opined that on examination of rival marks, a strong prima facie case of trade mark infringement had been made out. Thus, the Court held that continued usage of a well-known and protected brand name would cause grave injury to the plaintiff. Therefore, the Court granted ad-interim relief to the plaintiff, and restrained the defendants from use of the domain name www.jiocabs.com and the counterfeit mark ‘JIO’ and any name, mark or label identical with or deceptively similar to the plaintiff’s trade mark. Additionally, the defendants were also restrained from using pirated artwork of ‘JIO’, in any manner in relation to any other services or goods.
Background
The Plaintiff- Reliance Industries Limited, was registrant of the ‘JIO’/ 
trade mark in various classes, with the earliest registration being made in Class 9, on 9-12-2011 while the Defendant 1 was engaged in providing taxi services across Dehradun and Delhi, and were marketing themselves as an inter-state national level service, using the name ‘JIO’/ 
. Defendant 1 had also registered a website with the domain name, www.jiocabs.com. Defendant 2 was also providing services using the website registered by Defendant 1.
Aggrieved by the same, plaintiff filed the commercial suit against the defendants for infringement and passing off trade mark. The plaintiff filed the instant interim application seeking perpetual order and injunction against the usage of the aforesaid domain name and website, namely, www.jiocabs.com and had also sought intervention against the name, mark or artwork that is identical or deceptively similar to the plaintiff’s trade mark and original artistic work using the name ‘JIO’.
Analysis, Law and Decision
The Court noted that the plaintiff was a registered proprietor of the ‘JIO’ mark, which was registered on 7-9-2012. The plaintiff had also registered and a series of such marks with all trade variants under 14 separate registrations and there were at least 11 different domain names featuring the word ‘JIO’. The label using the name ‘JIO’ was registered on 24-1-2013 and the same was valid till 24-1-2033. Furthermore, the Court observed that the content of the website www.jiocabs.com had been changed and access to the same took the user to a different website which no longer shows the portal as the one complained of in the plaint.
The Court observed that question of ‘JIO’ being a well-known trademark had already been examined by various Benches of the present Court. Therefore, the Court after examining the rival marks opined that as a strong prima facie case had been made out for the grant of urgent ad-interim interlocutory reliefs. The Court stated that although the defendants had mended their approach of using the brand name and had switched to a new name, but the domain name still continued to be in use.
Accordingly, the Court held that ‘JIO’ was a well-known trademark, and opined that on examination of rival marks, a strong prima facie case of trademark infringement had been made out. Thus, the Court held that continued usage of a well-known and protected brand name would cause grave injury and the balance of convenience would be in favour of grant of the ad-interim relief. Therefore, the Court granted the plaintiff, a temporary injunction against the defendants from use of the domain name/website www.jiocabs.com and the counterfeit mark JIO and/or any name, mark or label identical with and/or deceptively similar to the plaintiff’s trade mark ‘JIO’ and from using pirated artwork of JIO, in any manner in relation to any other services or goods.
[Reliance Industries Limited v. Asif Ahmed, Interim Application (l) No. 28031 of 2025, decided on 7-10-2025]
Advocates who appeared in this case:
Advocate for the Plaintiff- Vinod A. Bhagat, C/o. Arjun T. Bhagat & Co
