Indian matrimonial website says its competitors’ ads cannot be shown.
Chennai-based Consim India Pvt Ltd, which owns bharatmatrimony.com and indiaproperties.com, has petitioned the Madras High Court against Google.com for “infringing” on its trademark.
In its petition, the company has said Google ads are used in BharatMatrimony’s platform to sell space to its (BharatMatrimony’s) competitors.
In the petition, a copy of which is available with Business Standard, Consim said that it had “trademarked www.tamilmatrimony.com, www.telegumatrimony, www.bharatrimony.com, www.bengalimatrimony.com, www.muslimmatrimony.com. Hence, Google should not allow ads on those trademarks”.
If a user types ‘Tamil matrimony’, for instance, in the Google search field on the site, the resultant advertisements or websites shown include shaadi.com and simplymarry.com. Consim says this shows Google is allowing its competition to bid on the trademarks of BharatMatrimony.
“We are not aware of it. We are yet to receive the court order,” said Google, when asked to comment. “In any case, the matter will be sub judice, and hence we cannot comment on it.”
Consim has asked the court to “give a permanent injunction restraining Google from infringing and/or enabling others to infringe plaintiff’s registered trademarks. Google should not allow competition to bid on trademarks of BharatMatrimony and should not allow company’s competition to use trademark as their heading”.
The company also asked Google and other respondents, including People Interactive Pvt Ltd, Jeevansathi Internet Services Pvt Ltd and Times Business Solutions Ltd, to surrender all compact discs, master copies, advertising materials, pamphlets, brochures, etc, which bear Consim’s trademarks and/or any other variants to the company.
Consim has also asked for Rs 10.05 lakh of damages for infringing and/or passing off and/or for enabling others to infringe its trademarks and domain names.
How does it work?
If a user types ‘Tamil matrimony’ in the Google search field on BharatMatrimony, it throws up links to websites like shaadi.com and simplymarry.com. The company has approached the court saying Google should not allow its competition to be linked to the trademarks of BharatMatrimony or use the trademark as their heading
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Its just a publicity stunt. Bharat matrimony has a page called bharatmatrimony.com/matrimonial/jeevansathi/ . Here they have used www.jeevansathi.com 's name in the page and the meta descriptip of the page says "Searching for jeevansathi Matrimonial Site. Your Search Ends Here. Find Your Perfect Match from thousands of jeevansathi profiles. Register Now." Now tell me Mr.Murugavel Janakiraman, Are you not misleading users using www.jeevansathi.com brand name ?
This case is totally crap. The way Google search algorithm works is for all websites and it cannot be custom made for any specific client.
If BharatMatrimony does not want to share its users to competitors ask them to remove Google search box.
And Fyi, Even if you exclude the google advts, shaadi, simplymarry and jeevansathi are bound to appear in the first page of the results. So nevertheless bharatmatrimony is giving its users to other portals someway or other.
This being said, When a person regiters in Google program he accepts a set of terms & conditions and google has explicitly written against such claims.
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