Flipkart, the Indian e-commerce company, issued a legal notice to Hyderabad-based technology blogger Amit Bhawani, alleging infringement of its trademark and logo and cybersquatting arising from his operation of the website amazonvsflipkart.com.<\/p>\n
Mr Bhawani operates technology blogs including Phone Radar and Android Advices. He also ran a website at the domain amazonvsflipkart.com, which hosted a customer satisfaction poll comparing the service quality of Flipkart and Amazon. The website displayed the trademarks of both companies. Flipkart responded by issuing a cease and desist notice alleging unauthorised use of its trademark, domain name, and artistic work.<\/p>\n
The cease and desist notice stated that Flipkart anticipated that the use of its logo and intellectual property was likely to cause confusion among users. The notice further alleged that by using the Flipkart name and logo, the website created a misleading impression that it was associated or affiliated with Flipkart, and that this misrepresentation could lead visitors to subscribe to services offered through amazonvsflipkart.com.<\/p>\n
Flipkart also accused Mr Bhawani of making unauthorised use of its intellectual property for financial and commercial gain. It characterised the registration of the domain name as cybersquatting on the basis that the domain contained the Flipkart trademark and was capable of diverting traffic from the Flipkart website to the benefit of the blogger. The notice further alleged passing off and asserted that the conduct had caused irreparable harm and injury to the company.<\/p>\n
Following receipt of the notice, which gave Mr Bhawani seven days to remove all Flipkart intellectual property and to cease use of the domain name, he took down the website. The incident raises questions about the extent to which the unauthorised use of a company’s name and logo for the purpose of hosting a comparative consumer poll constitutes actionable trademark infringement, and about the chilling effect that cease and desist notices may have on commentary and comparative information platforms.<\/p>\n
This article is for general information and does not constitute legal advice. Readers should consult a qualified attorney before acting on any matter discussed here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Flipkart sent a legal notice to blogger Amit Bhawani for alleged trademark misuse and cybersquatting related to a comparison website. The case underscores the legal risks for websites using company names for surveys or polls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":38,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,11],"tags":[534,7262,1753,537,7460,1160,41],"class_list":["post-27039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intellectual-property","category-trademarks","tag-amazon","tag-cease-and-desist","tag-cybersquatting","tag-flipkart","tag-legal-notice","tag-passing-off","tag-trademark-infringement-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27039"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":149906,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27039\/revisions\/149906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}