Established brands will get a boost from the Delhi High court ruling against Google’s practice of auctioning trademarked names as advertising keywords in its AdWords programme, experts said. Such use effectively violates an entity’s brand ownership, according to the ruling.
Justice Mini Pushkarna, in a judgement on May 22, observed that Google cannot be permitted to shrug off responsibility by making available a tool that leads to infringement, and then claim that the said tool was not mandatory. The court said the practice constituted a trademark infringement and permanently restrained the tech giant from using Hindware or its variations as keywords in the programme.
