The Delhi High Court has granted an interim injunction in favour of travel company MakeMyTrip in its Google AdWords case against rival, HappyEasyGo. The court has directed Google to block/suspend the Google Ads account of HappyEasyGo.

Issues bailable warrant

It has also issued a bailable warrant against travel company HappyEasyGo’s directors for contempt of court.

The court had asked Rajesh Kumar Dathik and Neelam Rani, Directors of HappyEasyGo, to be personally present in court through video conferencing; however, they did not do so.

Counsel Mohit Goel from Sim and San, along with four others, appeared for Makemytrip. Goel told BusinessLine:

“Even after repeated notices by the Delhi High Court, the directors of HappyEasyGo refused to appear before the court to explain their conduct, pursuant to which, the Delhi High Court has issued bailable warrants against two of the directors of HappyEasyGo.

“Delhi High Court has further directed Google India Pvt Ltd and Google LLC to suspend the account of HappyEasyGo on their AdWords Program.”

The court passed an order to “issue bailable warrants for the personal presence of contemnors No 2 and 3, namely Rajesh Kumar Dathik and Neelam Rani, on a surety of ₹50,000 each before this court on the next date of hearing”.

Suspend advertising

It further directed the Google Ads program of Google to suspend the advertising account of defendant No 1 on the Google Ads Programme.

A copy of the order was reviewed by BusinessLine . According to sources, MakeMyTrip had filed a plea in May 2018 before the Delhi High Court against travel start-up HappyEasyGo for infringement of their brand name and trademark ‘MakeMyTrip’ and its other variants.

HappyEasyGo was caught using the trademark MakeMyTrip as a keyword on the Google Ads Program to advertise their services on the Google Search Engine. At present, MakeMyTrip has an injunction against HappyEasyGo from using MakeMyTrip and its deceptive variants in Google’s Adwords Program.

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