More than a month after the Delhi High Court (HC) imposed a fine on Google for violating the trademark of sanitaryware major Hindware, the big tech giant has now moved to challenge the ruling.

According to Delhi HC’s cause list, a division bench of Justice V Kameswar Rao and Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora will now hear the appeal on July 10. 

Confirming the development, a Google spokesperson said, “We are appealing the Delhi High Court’s order, which diverges from established legal precedents in India. Our ads policies reflect standard practices that enable competition and give consumers more choices. We look forward to presenting our position to the court”.

The appeal challenges the May 26 order passed by the single-judge bench of the HC. Justice Mini Pushkarna, found that the big tech major allowed other companies to bid on the Hindware keyword on Google Ads, thereby infringing upon the sanitaryware giant’s trademark.

The HC also restrained Google LLC and Google India from using the company’s registered trademarks as an advertising keyword, adding that the search giant’s keyword auction system constituted trademark infringement under the Trade Marks Act, 1999.

In its plea, Hindware had argued that its rivals’ websites appeared on search results on Google when users searched for keywords like “Hindware” and “Hindware Sanitary”. This, the company said, constituted unfair competition and trademark dilution.

The saga traces its origins back to a decade-old commercial lawsuit filed by Hindware in 2013 against rivals Cera and Grohe as well as a separate case against Google. In its plea, the sanitaryware company argued that rivals Cera and Grohe purchased the keyword of its trademarked brand through Google AdWords, thereby violating its trademark. 

Eventually, Hindware settled its case with the two competitors, but the case continued as Google India and Google LLC continued as the only contesting defendants.

In its May 26 order, the HC observed that Google was earning revenue by auctioning trademarked keywords to competing brands, and hence violated Hindware’s trademark by exploiting its “commercial pulling power” without authorisation. 

With its order, the Delhi HC put bidding on keywords of rival companies under legal scrutiny. Meanwhile, Google has moved to challenge the ruling as it could potentially open the door for brands to pursue legal action against big tech giants and competitors involved in such practices.

However, this is not the first time that Google has run into controversy over its keyword bidding system. In 2022, online travel aggregator (OTA) MakeMyTrip filed a trademark infringement and unfair-competition suit against Google and rival Booking.com, alleging that competitors were illegally bidding on its registered trademarks as keywords to divert search traffic. Eventually, the Supreme Court (SC) dismissed MakeMyTrip’s plea.

A year later in 2023, the Delhi HC also rejected a plea by insurtech major Policybazaar, seeking to restrain the use of keywords identical to its trade marks on Google’s AdWords Program by other entities. 

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