The Delhi High Court has granted a temporary injunction in favour of the fast food chain, Burger King Corporation, and directed the suspension of domain names/websites infringing upon its ‘BURGER KING’ trademarks.
Burger King Corporation (plaintiff) sought an injunction against unknown defendants for running fake franchise/dealership websites using its trademarks. It is alleged that the operators of the domain names are collecting money from innocent and gullible consumers and customers.
Burger King submitted that unknown Defendants obtained registration of domain names, which were a variation of the words ‘BURGER KING’, ‘INDIA’, ‘FRANCHISE’ or ‘FRANCHISES’. The impugned domain names are bkfranchise.in, burgerkingfranchise.net, burgerkingindia.co, bkpartner.in and www-burgerking.com.
It is stated that the defendants were engaged in registering misleading domain names incorporating the BURGER KING trademarks and operating fake websites and inviting the general public to apply for BURGER KING franchise opportunities.
It is stated that upon receiving a franchise application, the defendant sent emails to unsuspecting victims pretending to be representatives of the master franchisee of Burger King in the Asia-Pacific region. They circulated various forged documents including ‘approval letters’, ‘letters of intent’, and ‘invoices’ all prominently bearing Burger King’s trademarks.
Justice Prathiba M. Singh noted that the Court issued injunctions against various illegal domain names in previous orders in relation to the suit.
On 10 May 2022, the Court restrained several defendants from advertising, offering any goods or services, using or registering corporate names, domain names or pages bearing the trademarks BURGER KING, BK or any mark deceptively similar to Burger King’s trademarks.
The Court thus directed the suspension of impugned domain names and email addresses by the Domain Name Registrars, GoDaddy.com LLC and OVI Hosting Pvt. Ltd.
It directed the Ministry of Communications and Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology to issue directions to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block the impugned websites.
The Court also directed Bharti Airtel Limited to block the cell ID and provide details of names, address, phone numbers, email addresses, billing and payment details and KYC documents of the defendants.
Case title: Burger King Corporation vs. Swapnil Patil & Ors (CS (COMM) 303/2022)
