The Delhi High Court has rejected a plea by PolicyBazaar, an aggregator of insurance products, seeking to restrain the use of keywords identical to its trademarks on Google’s AdWords Programme by other entities.
In its legal actions against Coverfox and Acko, Policybazaar alleged that these defendant companies were employing keywords identical to “Policybazaar” trademarks, such as “Policy Bazaar,” “PolicyBazaar,” and “Policy Bazar,” with the alleged intention of redirecting business away from Policybazaar’s website through the creation of confusion.
A Google spokesperson said in a statement, “The Court has held that Google’s Ads Trademark Policy is in compliance with the Indian Trademarks Act (TM Act) and does not amount to infringement of trademarks, unless the resulting ad upon review is held to mislead or confuse users as to the source of origin of the Ad. Adopting this principle of law, the Court held that the impugned ads in the matter are not infringing of Policybazaar’s trademark rights. As a consequence, the existing Policy will continue to be applicable to all advertisers as before.”
“As a company, we comply with all local laws. Specifically on our Ads Trademarks policy, we have a clear and stated policy that does not allow advertisers to use trademarked terms in the ad-text of an ad, except in certain pro-consumer and legal scenarios, such as resellers and informational sites. And we investigate any reported use of a trademarked term in the adtext and take prompt action to not only remove such ads but block that same advertiser from referencing the trademark in their ads in the future. We want users to trust the ads on our platform, so we strive to ensure ads are clear and honest, and provide the information that users need to make informed decisions.”