Delhi High Court Orders Take Down Of 'Fraudulent Website' Impersonating Tata, Luring Customers To Invest In Ponzi Scheme

The Delhi High Court has ordered the taking down of a “fraudulent website” impersonating Tata Sons Private Limited and luring customers to invest in their ponzi investment scheme.

Justice Sanjeev Narula directed restrained Tata Restart, the entity running the website, from, using Tata or Tata Restart mark or any other mark deceptively similar to the registered marks of Tata Sons.

Granting an ad-interim injunction in favour of Tata Sons in its trademark infringement suit, the court directed the defendant entity to immediately take down the website “www.tatarestart.com.”

The court further directed the domain name registration to block or suspend the domain name “www.tatarestart.com”.

Tata Sons alleged that the website in question was running a Ponzi financial or investment scheme by impersonating it and was targeting unwary investors by promising unrealistic returns.

The court observed that a prima facie case was established in favour of Tata Sons demonstrating blatant infringement of its trademark “Tata”.

“Such use of Plaintiff's trademark on the website, as depicted in photographs above, is bound to cause consumer confusion and association with Plaintiff as Defendant No.1 has wholly incorporated the Plaintiff's registered mark “TATA” in its website domain www.tatarestart.com, and marks “TATA RESTART,” the court said.

It added that the impugned website domain name and marks were deceptively similar to Tata Son's trademark and website “www.tata.com” making the adoption of “Tata Restart” mark dishonest.

“In view of the above, the Court finds that Plaintiff has made out a prima facie case in its favour and in case no ex-parte ad-interim injunction is granted Plaintiff will suffer an irreparable loss; balance of convenience also lies in favour of the Plaintiff and against Defendant No.1,” the court said.

Counsel for Plaintiff: Mr. Pravin Anand, Mr. Achuthan Sreekumar and Mr. Rohil Bansal, Advocates

Counsel for Defendants: Ms. Mrinal Ojha, Mr. Debarshi Datta and Ms. Tanya Chaudhry, Advocates for D-2

Title: TATA SONS PRIVATE LIMITED v. M/S TATA RESTART & ANR.

Citation: 2024 LiveLaw (Del) 441

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