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Ex-parte order passed by Delhi High Court for protection of trademark 'Apna' in suit against fake job websites
The Delhi High Court in the recent case of Apnatime Tech Pvt. Ltd. and Anr. vs Anik Dev Nath & Ors. passed an ex-parte order protecting the trademark Apna against getting used by fake job websites. The Single judge bench of Justice Jyoti Singh held that there was prima facie evidence in granting an ex parte injunction and the balance of convenience was in favour of the plaintiff (Apnatime Tech Pvt. Ltd).
The plaintiff, that helps people in finding jobs through their portal under the name www.apna.co and 'ApnaJob Search' like the mobile application, had received a complaint from a customer that she had been scammed of a huge amount of money due to registration on a website- www.apnajobs.in. Adv. Diva Arora and Adv. Devyani Nath appeared on behalf of the plaintiff.
As per the plaintiff, the website allegedly mirrored its website, used the same logo, and targeted impersonated customers, according to the plaintiffs. Additionally, the claim was that this website was shut down in September 2022 and shortly after another website cropped up after that, www.apnajobs.org, which had the same mode of function as the previous website and was claimed to have popped up under the guise.
As a result, plaintiffs were sued for copyright infringement, passing, website suspension, and damages against the defendant in court. After ruling that Apnatime Tech was weighed and weighed for reasons of convenience, the court found that the defendant, Anik Dev Nath, was not responsible for the plaintiff's layout of his website, users interface, arrangement or any other artistic work in a manner that may amount to infringement of copyright of work of plaintiff.
The Court also restrained the said defendant from using the trademark or domain name with the mark 'Apna' with or without the prefix ‘Jobs’ i.e. equivalent to transferring off his businesses and facilities being same as that of the plaintiff. The Court also ordered to suspension of domain names www.apnajobs.org and www.apnajobs.in by the domain name registrars and maintaining the current status of the domain names.
The court also asked the Ministry of Telecommunications and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to allow various internet and telecommunications providers registered under them to block access to the domain names www.apnajobs.in and www.apnajobs.org.
Refer to the following case for more details - Apnatime Tech Pvt. Ltd. and Anr. vs Anik Dev Nath & Ors
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