Delhi HC IP-Division Single Judge (Tejas Karia J.) upheld an interim injunction restraining Flipkart from using 'MARQ' and 'MARQ by Flipkart' for electronics, holding the mark phonetically, structurally and visually similar to prior-user Marc Enterprises' 'MARC' and that addition of the Flipkart house mark could not cure the deception.
On 22 January 2026, a two-judge bench held that section 60(5)(c) IBC does not empower the NCLT to declare title in a disputed trademark when the approved resolution plan itself flags rival claims; trademark adjudication must be left to the competent civil court.
On 2 November 2018, Pratibha M. Singh, J. of the Delhi High Court held that the luxury reseller darveys.com was not a passive intermediary under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act 2000 and could not claim the safe-harbour against trade-mark infringement. The judgment enumerated some twenty-six indicia of active involvement — paid membership, curated marketplace, control over which sellers could list, authenticity guarantees, logistics handling, non-disclosure of seller identities and use of the Louboutin name and Mr. Louboutin's image as meta-tags. A close reading of the active-versus-passive intermediary test under Section 79 read with Rule 3 of the Intermediary Guidelines Rules 2011, the post-judgment doctrinal arc through Amazon Seller v. Modicare and the Division Bench gloss on Amway v. 1MG.
On 10 April 2026, Justice Tushar Rao Gedela of the Delhi High Court granted an ex parte ad interim injunction restraining a Bhopal-based publisher from using 'The Pioneer' trademark and from copying the contents of the plaintiff's newspaper. The judgment, in CS(COMM) 338/2026, treats the defendant's conduct — following the revocation of a 2004 Memorandum of Understanding — as a composite trademark-and-copyright infringement under the Trade Marks Act, 1999 and the Copyright Act, 1957. A digest of the facts, the relief, and what the order tells practitioners about the interim-injunction architecture in newspaper IP matters.
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.
The May 2026 cycle in Indian intellectual-property law has produced three doctrinal threads running in parallel — the Division Bench reset of the SEP-evidence architecture in Bansal v. Philips and the parallel pro-tem FRAND security in Malikie v. Xiaomi; the Delhi High Court DB's close-out of the Ilaiyaraaja-Saregama composer-rights line under the pre-1994 Copyright Act architecture; and the Calcutta High Court's first Indian engagement with the generative-AI/IP interface in Indiamart v. OpenAI. Read alongside Syngenta on agrochemical polymorphism and Section 3(d), Orient Electric on Designs Act anticipation discipline, Médecins Sans Frontières on trade-mark use in fictional film content, Indian Explosives on Section 12A pre-institution mediation in copyright suits, Communication Components Antenna on antenna-patent damages quantum, and Ars Steels on procedural fairness at the Designs Controller, the cycle discloses the operational architecture within which Indian IP practice now operates.
On 10 June 2020 Justice C. Saravanan of the Madras High Court Original Side, in ITC Limited v. Nestle India Ltd, dismissed ITC's passing-off action against Nestle's use of 'Magical Masala' on Maggi noodle packaging. The judgment holds that 'Magic Masala' and 'Magical Masala' are laudatory and descriptive — 'magic' and 'magical' are common laudatory epithets, 'masala' is a generic flavour descriptor — and that neither party used these terms as trade-mark identifiers. The dominant marks were 'Sunfeast Yippee!' and 'Maggi'; the disputed phrases functioned as flavour-variant descriptors. A close reading of the descriptive-use vs trade-mark-use distinction, the post-Marico v. Agro Tech architecture for laudatory marks, and what the judgment tells brand owners about packaging hierarchy.
On 6 May 2004, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court of India — Ruma Pal, J. and P. Venkatarama Reddi, J. — held that a domain name is more than a mere internet address; it functions as a business identifier capable of trade-mark protection under the Trade Marks Act 1999 and the common-law tort of passing off. The Court reversed the Karnataka High Court Division Bench and restored the City Civil Judge Bangalore's interim injunction against Siffynet Solutions in favour of Satyam Infoway. A close reading of the territoriality of cyberspace question, the classical trinity test applied to coined word marks, the dicta on the UDRP and ICANN architecture and the foundational role of the judgment in the .in INDRP framework.
On 14 December 2017 a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court, in Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha v. M/S Prius Auto Industries Ltd, affirmed the Delhi High Court Division Bench's reversal of an ad-interim injunction in favour of Toyota and dismissed Toyota's appeal. The judgment, authored by Justice Ranjan Gogoi for himself and Justice Navin Sinha, holds that trans-border reputation under Indian passing-off law is governed by the territoriality principle — a foreign mark must demonstrate substantial spillover goodwill in Indian territory at the relevant date, here April 2001, and the classical trinity of goodwill, misrepresentation and damage applies even where the mark is globally famous. The judgment reads down Whirlpool (1996) and Milmet Oftho (2004) without overruling them and aligns Indian law with the English Starbucks (HK) approach. A close reading of the judgment's procedural posture, the territoriality holding, and what practitioners should plead in trans-border reputation suits.