E-Commerce Platforms Must Ensure Availability Of Sellers’ Details For Awareness Of Consumers: Delhi High Court

The Delhi High Court has observed that there is an obligation on e-commerce platforms to ensure that complete details of the sellers are available on the website for awareness of the consumers.

“There is also an obligation upon the E-Commerce platform to ensure that the complete details of the sellers are available on the platform so that the consumer is aware of the sellers from whom the product has been purchased and the entity, who is listing the product,” Justice Prathiba M Singh observed.

The court made the observation while dealing with a suit filed by a clothing brand namely Tibra Collection against various entities alleging that they were advertising, publishing and offering for sale garments on e-commerce platform Meesho which were a complete copy of its garments. Tibra Collection also alleged that the defendants were misusing its photographs and images.

Perusing the photographs, Justice Singh said that it is a case where the defendant were completely misusing the plaintiff’s product and listing images as well as the product design to “monetarily ride on its reputation.”

The court said that in some cases, complete images were also not visible in the defendants’ listings, which is nothing but an attempt to conceal the copying.

“The sellers do not have any right to copy the photographs, images, product design of the Plaintiff in this manner and cause damage to the Plaintiff. While E-Commerce provide new platforms for small designers and businesses, the same ought not to be misused for the purposes of imitating and producing look alike products thereby violating the intellectual property rights of the Plaintiff,” the court observed.

Passing an ad-interim injunction order, the court restrained the five known defendants and other sellers, who are listing their products on Meesho platform, from reproducing, copying, publishing and imitating any of the designs of Tibra Collection’s clothes or even reproducing its images including the photographs.

“The Defendant No.1- Meesho.com shall also reveal all the available details of the said sellers including the address, mobile numbers, email addresses, total sales made by the sellers, GST details, payments made to the sellers since the time listings have been put up. If there are any payments, which are still to be made by the Defendant No.1 to the sellers, the same shall be held back till further orders,” the court ordered.

Counsel for Plaintiff: Mr. Anshuman Upadhyay, Mr. Naseem& Ms. Apoorva, Advs.

Counsel for Defendants: Mr. Sidharth Chopra, Ms. Sneha Jain, Mr. Vivek Ayyagari and Ms R Ramya, Advs. for D-1.

Title: TIBRA COLLECTION v. FASHNEAR TECHNOLOGIES PRIVATE LIMITED & ORS.

Citation: 2023 LiveLaw (Del) 958

Click Here To Read Order