Delhi High Court Directs Suspension of HappyEasyGo.com Ad Account On Google, On MakeMyTrip Plea
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A single judge bench of Justice Jayant Nath of the Delhi High Court has directed search engine major Google to suspend the advertising account of travel booking website, HappyEasyGo.com on its Ad Words programme, where companies bid for keywords to appear on top of Google's search results.The directive comes on two contempt petitions by Make-MyTrip (MMT) in against HappyEasyGo (HEG) for...
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A single judge bench of Justice Jayant Nath of the Delhi High Court has directed search engine major Google to suspend the advertising account of travel booking website, HappyEasyGo.com on its Ad Words programme, where companies bid for keywords to appear on top of Google's search results.
The directive comes on two contempt petitions by Make-MyTrip (MMT) in against HappyEasyGo (HEG) for acting against a prior order which had restrained HEG from bidding for, adopting and using any of MMT's word marks or deceptive variants thereof, as an Ad Word through Google's Ad Word Programme.
Filed in 2018, the pleas got a fresh breath of life when MMT alleged that HEG was still using MMT-related keywords despite the order dated May 30, 2018, in which the above restraining directives were passed in favour of MMT.
The initial pleas had sought stop HEG from using MMT-related keywords to appear on top of search results. With HEG's repeated usage, MMT pursued fresh contempt notices against its competitor's use of MMT-related keywords to boost its visibility in search results.
Google Ad Words a key revenue source for the search giant where companies bid for certain keywords to appear on top of search results. This includes keywords like the name of popular platforms like MMT.
The May 30, 2018 order in MMT's favour had stated:
"till further orders, the defendant no. 1, its partner, directors, shareholders, assigns in business, affiliates, subsidiaries, agents, broadcasters, representatives, advertisers, franchisees, licensees and/or all other persons acting on its behalf are restrained from bidding for, adopting and using Plaintiff's MakeMyTrip word Mark, or any deceptive variant thereof, whether with the inclusion of spaces or, other special characters in the trade mark MakeMyTrip, as an Ad Word through the Ad Word Program of Google or any other ad word/key word program in any manner whatsoever.