Delhi High Court: A Single Judge Bench of the Delhi High Court granted an ex parte order in favour of Yahoo Inc. restraining the defendant to use the domain name ‘yahookochi’ and also awarded damages of Rs. 5 lakh.
The Court noted that there is no plausible explanation for the adoption of the identical mark as part of trading name and domain name of the defendant and the potentiality of harm is enormous on the internet as the plaintiff has a very wide internet presence and operates various YAHOO formative websites.
Mr. Praveen Anand represented the Plaintiff (Yahoo Inc.) and pointed out that even after issuance of Cease and Desist notice the defendant did not change the name. The Court said that “the adoption of the YAHOO mark by the defendants is dishonest as is evident from the fact that the font used by the defendants to represent YAHOO in their trading name is identical to the unique stylized font which the plaintiff used to represents its YAHOO trade mark till 2014”. [Yahoo Inc. v. Rinshad Rinu, 2017 SCC OnLine Del 8949 , decided on 03-07-2017]
