Hamdard National Foundation (India) v. Amazon India Limited
In the High Court of Delhi
CS (Comm) 607/2022 and IA 14189-14192/2022
Before Justice Prathiba M. Singh
Decided on September 05, 2022

Relevancy of the Case: Interim injunction against the defendant for trademark infringement on an e-commerce marketplace

Statutes and Provisions Involved

• The Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 (Order XXXIX Rule 1, 2)
• The Information Technology Act, 2000 (Section 79)

Relevant Facts of the Case

• The plaintiff operates a business that produces and sells numerous Unani and Ayurvedic medicines, oils, syrups, and non-alcoholic beverages.
• The Hamdard Group has existed for almost a century. It holds registration for the marks HAMDARD and ROOH AFZA.
• They have also registered other trademarks for ROOH AFZA variants, including the labels and flavour variants.
• The defendants, through Amazon, and a seller on Amazon, are both selling and offering for sale an impugned product under the name ROOH AFZA.
• The plaintiff seeks interim relief through a temporary injunction against the defendants.

Prominent Arguments by the Advocates

• The plaintiff’s counsel submitted that the impugned product is manufactured in Pakistan. It does not comply with the legal requirements of the Legal Metrology Act, 2009, the Legal Metrology (Packaged Commodities) Rules, 2011, and the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006.
• The defendant’s counsel for Amazon India submitted that they do not have any connection with the company Amazon Seller Services Pvt. Ltd., which runs the e-commerce platform (www.amazon.in) in any manner. If the URLs of the infringing listings are furnished to them, they will take down those products.

Opinion of the Bench

• The plaintiff has made a prima facie case, and the balance of convenience lies in their favour. If the court does not grant an injunction at this stage, it would cause irreparable injury to the plaintiff.
• Since Amazon claims to be an intermediary, it shall file an affidavit clarifying whether the sellers’ details are mentioned on the ROOH AFZA product listings, invoices, product labels, etc.

Final Decision

• The court granted an ad-interim injunction in the plaintiff’s favour. Further, the court passed directions for the plaintiff to share the URLs of infringing products with Amazon Sellers. The platform shall remove the same within 48 hours of intimation.

Upama Nandy, an undergraduate student at Symbiosis Law School, Pune, prepared this case summary during her internship with The Cyber Blog India in January/February 2023.