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Companies such as JioStar, Louis Vuitton, Domino’s, Warner Bros., and Tata Solar have filed cases with the intellectual property rights (IPR) division of the Delhi High Court (HC) in light of a flurry of rogue websites offering fake products and services, as per a report by LiveMint.
The Delhi HC witnessed 58 such cases in 2024, a 75% rise from 2023, as per data from Anand and Anand, an IPR law firm based in Delhi.
“The shift to e-commerce during the pandemic, when physical stores took a backseat, created fertile ground for infringers. As India’s economy becomes more reliant on e-commerce, the problem continues to grow,” said Swati Sharma, a partner at Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, who heads the law firm’s intellectual property (IP) team.
The Curious Case Of Rogue Websites
Aggrieved companies usually find relief in the form of John Doe orders (also known as Ashok Kumar orders) that the Delhi HC issues against parties that are unknown.
These orders – usually granted for a limited period, ex parte, and requiring active enforcement by the plaintiff – enable rights holders and companies to take action against anonymous entities indulging in copyright infringement, counterfeiting, or other illegal activities.
In cases involving rogue websites, transgressors often target well-established companies and brand names as they have a reputation and consumers’ trust to bank upon.
“Established brands are low-hanging fruit for counterfeiters; thus, they mimic well-known companies because consumers are more likely to buy from a familiar name rather than an unknown brand,” noted Sharma from Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas.
In the JioStar case, the court barred IPTV Smarter Pro and several rogue websites from illegally streaming Star India’s content, and instructed service providers to restrict access and share the infringers’ details.
Notably, this is not the first case where someone has attempted to infringe upon Reliance Industries’ intellectual property rights. Last year, a Delhi-based app developer tried to sell the JioHotstar domain name to Reliance for Rs 1 crore after finding out that the company had plans to merge JioCinema and Disney+Hotstar: a practice commonly known as cybersquatting.
And the buck doesn’t just stop here – brokers operating on the internet even facilitate the buying and selling of social media accounts.
For instance, platforms such as FameSwap and Flippa allow the sale and purchase of TikTok accounts and YouTube channels.
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In a similar context, X (formerly Twitter) filed a complaint in a US court in November 2024 against an American website that sold its X account handle ‘Infowars’ to a satirical news publication, The Onion.
Companies’ Proactive Approach To Tackle The Websites
However, companies have adopted a proactive approach in dealing with such troublemakers on the web.
“Companies employ professionals, third-party agents and technical models to keep a constant check on domains similar to theirs to avoid issues of rogue websites. When they are identified, the company’s representatives immediately reach out to the domain holders to pull the rogue website down, a process that takes 3-5 days in most cases,” said Akshat Jain, chief technology officer at cyber security firm Cyware.
Apart from scanning potential threats, companies are also purchasing nearly all domain names similar to theirs to prevent rogue websites from cropping up on the internet.
Notably, since 2020, the Delhi HC has pronounced judgments for more than a third of cases related to rogue websites. In the remaining cases, the court has issued injunctions to provide interim relief to the plaintiffs.
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