Court emphasized the urgency of protecting trademark rights against fraudulent domain registrations and impersonation, asserting a prima facie case for immediate injunctive relief.

JUDGMENT

Prathiba M. Singh, J.(Oral)--This hearing has been done through hybrid mode.

I.A. 4506/2022 (for direction)

2. The present application has been filed by the Plaintiff-Kamdhenu Limited, seeking various directions qua the illegal use of the term/mark/name `Kamdhenusteel' in various forms by known and unknown Defendants.

3. The background of this case is that the Plaintiff adopted the trademark `Kamdhenu' in 1994 and has been manufacturing, selling and offering for sale various products including TMT Bars, Cement, Real Estate, etc. It is stated to be an ISO 9001:2008 certified company, with a market share of around 20% of retail branded TMT Steel Bars in India. The Plaintiff is also the registered owner of the trademark `Kamdhenu' and its formative marks, in various classes, including in Classes 6 and 35, registered between the years 1996 and 2008. The flagship website/domain names of the Plaintiff are `"www.kamdhenuispat.com"' and `"www.kamdhenulimited.com"', stated to have been registered in 1999 and 2016.

4. The Plaintiff realized sometime in 2021 that one Sh. Raghunath Virdharam Bishnoi-Defendant No.1 with the address 5/2, Club Road, Punjabi Bagh, Delhi and the email address - "bishnoimumbai@gmail.com", with various other addresses in Mumbai and Rajasthan, and certain unknown people, had registered various domain names with the mark `Kamdhenu', such as the domain name `"www.kamdhenuishpat.com"', copying the trademarks/label/trade name/etc. of the Plaintiff. The case of the Plaintiff is that the Defendants had portrayed themselves to be the representatives of the Plaintiff-company and induced various third parties to enter into dealership agreements with them, by impersonating the Plaintiff and its business. The Plaintiff was made aware of the same when one entity informed them that it had received multiple calls from mobile numbers +91-8291921518 & +91-9137285531 of Defendant Nos.1&2, with the service providers being Vodafone Idea Limited/Defendant No.3 (hereinafter "Vodafone") & Reliance Jio Limited/Defendant No.4 (hereinafter "Reliance Jio").

5. The details relating to the number of persons who have been defrauded by the Defendants have been set out in the application. The modus operandi adopted by these Defendants was to approach various customers and get purchase orders placed from them and receive advance amounts through various bank accounts.

6. Moreover, the submission of Mr. Bansal, ld. Counsel for the Plaintiff, is that Defendant No.1 had in fact availed of the Ads Program on the Google platform and had registered `kamdhenuispat' as the keyword so as to appear in the top search result as a sponsored advertisement. Accordingly, the Plaintiff by the present application, is seeking directions against the Registrar of the said domains - GoDaddy LLC/Defendant No.8 (hereinafter "GoDaddy"), as also against various banks/Defendant Nos.5-7, telecom companies/Defendant Nos.3, 4 & 9, and Google LLC/Defendant No.10 (hereinafter "Google"), for disclosure of details of the holders of the domain names, mobile numbers, bank accounts, and Google Ads/email accounts.

7. In this matter, in I.A. No.13715/2021, being an application seeking injunction under Order XXXIX Rules 1&2 CPC, the predecessor Bench of this Court, on 25th October, 2021, had passed an interim order and directions in the following terms:

"xxx xxx xxx

6. The plaintiff has made out a prima facie case. The defendants No.1 and 2, their owners, partners etc. are restrained by an ex-parte injunction in terms of prayer para (a) of the present application.

7. Defendants No.3 and 4 are directed to provide the KYC details to the court of the Mobi