On 13 December 2017, a three-judge bench ordered search engines to auto-block pre-natal sex-determination advertisements, recalibrating the Shreya Singhal intermediary safe-harbour for PCPNDT enforcement.
On 22 May 2026, Justice Mini Pushkarna of the Delhi High Court held that the use of a registered trademark as a bidding keyword to trigger sponsored advertisements constitutes infringement under Section 29(6)(d) of the Trade Marks Act, 1999 — and that Google could not, on the record before the Court, claim safe harbour under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000. The judgment, which awarded damages of ₹30 lakh in favour of Hindware, sets the operative position on keyword-advertising trademark infringement in India. A digest of the holding, the doctrinal logic, and the implications for platforms and advertisers.
On 23 December 2016 a Division Bench of the Delhi High Court, in MySpace Inc v. Super Cassettes Industries Ltd, set aside Justice Manmohan Singh's blanket 2011 injunction and worked out the first coherent Indian framework for intermediary safe-harbour in copyright. The DB held that the proviso to Section 81 of the IT Act does not preclude an intermediary from invoking the Section 79 safe-harbour in copyright suits; that 'actual knowledge' under Section 51(a)(ii) of the Copyright Act requires knowledge of specific infringing material at a specific URL; that takedown notices must identify works with specificity, location and ownership; and that no general proactive monitoring obligation can be imposed.