No 'Shaadi' on BharatMatrimony for now

The high court in Chennai granted the owner of bharatmatrimony.com an interim order, restraining Google India from using its ads on the former's platform to sell space to the petitioner's competitors.

The order also aplies to three other matrimonial sites, shaadi.com, jeevansathi.com and simplymarry.com.

The complaint of Consim India, which owns the Bharat Matrimony website and four others of a similar nature, all of which names it has trademarked, is that Google is "infringing" its property rights. One of its websites, for instance, is tamilmatrimony.com. And, it says, if a user types 'Tamil matrimony,' in the Google search field, the advertisements or websites shown include shaadi.com and simplymarry.com, who are its competitors.

In other words, says Consim's petition, Google is allowing the former's competition to bid on the trademarks of Bharat Matrimony. It says Google should not be allowed to permit its competition to be linked to the trademarks of Bharat Matrimony, for this is driving the latter's customers to the competition.

After hearing the case, judge G Rajasuria passed an order restraining Google India and the three other matrimonial sites from infringing or enabling others to infringe on Bharatmatrimony's registered trademark. This is applicable till the next hearing.

The court also asked Google India not to include the trademark names of Bharatmatrimony in their Adwords or Key word suggestion tool.