FanCode v. FanCode 11: Delhi High Court Grants Interim Injunction In Favour Of Dream11 In Trademark Infringement Suit

The Delhi High Court has granted ad interim ex parte injunction in favour of the owners of Dream11 in respect of their online sports platform FanCode in a trademark infringement suit against 'FanCode 11' website.

Justice Navin Chawla in the order observed that Sporta Technologies Private Limited, which operates the fantasy sports platform Dream11, has been able to make a "good prima facie case" in its favour.

"The balance of convenience is also in favour of the plaintiffs and against the defendant. The plaintiffs as well as the general public is likely to suffer grave irreparable injury in case an ad-interim injunction is not granted in their favour," the court said in its order dated November 9.

The court was dealing with a suit filed by Sporta Technologies Private Limited which submitted that it adopted the trademark "Dream-11" in 2012 for its fantasy sports platform. It was also submitted that the mark "FanCode" has been adopted by the company for its multi-sport aggregator platform which offers content, merchandise and streaming of matches and sports related content.

The suit alleged that one Kundan Roy, owner of the impugned website www.fancode11.com and the mobile application 'Fancode11', has adopted the mark dishonestly and intentionally mixed the two marks "Dream-11" and "FanCode" of Sporta Technologies. Even the look-and-feel of the mobile application of the defendant is similar to that of the plaintiffs, thereby leading to a possibility of deception, the court was told.

Regarding Roy's Youtube channel which uses the mark "FANKODE- 11", Advocate Shwetasree Majumdar appearing for Sporta Technologies submitted that mere replacement of the alphabet 'C' by 'K' in the mark "FanCode" would not be sufficient to distinguish the two marks.

Ruling in favour of the plaintiff, the court ordered: "In view of the above, there shall be an ad-interim ex-parte order of injunction in favour of the plaintiffs and against the defendant in terms of the prayers made in paragraphs 32 (a) to (c) of the present application till further orders."

Advocates Shwetasree Majumdar, Prithvi Singh and Rohan Krishna Seth appeared for the plaintiffs.

Title: SPORTA TECHNOLOGIES PVT LTD & ANR. v. KUNDAN ROY

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