Trademark infringement usually depends on what consumers see. Meta tags are invisible to them — code written for search engines. The Bombay High Court held that using a competitor’s mark there is still using it, because the diversion of traffic is entirely real.
The case
Petitioner: People Interactive (I) Pvt. Ltd. Respondents: Gaurav Jerry & ors. Mark: Shaadi.com Court: Bombay High Court
Siddharth Mehta established the Shaadi.com matrimonial portal in 1996. People Interactive, incorporated in 2000, owns the trademark along with other brands.
In October 2013, the company discovered ShaadiHiShaadi.com offering identical services. It identified three defendants: the first had registered the domain, the second provided domain registration services, and the third hosted the site.
The plaintiff sought injunctions and de-registration of the infringing domain.
The issue
Whether ShaadiHiShaadi.com exploited Shaadi.com’s reputation and amounted to passing off through confusion and deception.
What the plaintiff showed
The services were identical, and the spelling closely tracked the plaintiff’s mark. Both used similar taglines — the defendant’s “World’s Biggest Matrimonial Service” mirroring the plaintiff’s “The World’s Largest Matrimonial Service.”
Critically, the defendant had embedded the plaintiff’s mark and domain name in the site’s meta tags — HTML code that supplies information about a webpage to search engines. The effect was to divert users searching for the plaintiff to the infringing site.
That is what makes the case interesting. The copying visible to consumers — the name, the tagline, the services — was itself substantial. But the meta tags were doing work no visitor could see, harvesting the plaintiff’s search traffic before a user ever reached either site.
The judgment
The court recognised the mechanism directly, observing that when a meta tag uses the domain name, trademarks or other mark defining the domain, a search engine would be bound to report that the domain in question is the same as the other.
It concluded that the defendant had unlawfully leveraged the plaintiff’s goodwill by incorporating its intellectual property into meta tags, and ordered:
- cessation of the use of ShaadiHiShaadi.com; and
- the second and third defendants to cancel the domain registration and suspend hosting services.
The orders against the registrar and host are as significant as those against the operator. A rights holder who obtains an injunction against an anonymous or absent site operator has won very little; directions to the intermediaries who control the domain and the servers are what actually take the site down.
Why it still matters
Meta keywords carry far less weight with search engines than they did in 2014 — most modern engines largely ignore the keywords tag. But the principle the court applied has proved durable and portable: using a competitor’s mark in a hidden, machine-facing way to capture their traffic is actionable, notwithstanding that no consumer ever sees it.
That reasoning now applies to a range of practices the case predates — keyword advertising, structured data, alt text, and app store metadata. The Delhi High Court’s later treatment of keyword advertising in Google v. DRS Logistics runs along the same line: invisible use is still use, though a claimant must still establish confusion.
The court’s analysis demonstrated a readiness to engage with evolving technology in trademark cases — recognising that the harm was diversion of traffic, and locating the remedy with the parties able to stop it.
The takeaways
- Invisible use is still use — meta tags fell within the court’s reach.
- The harm is traffic diversion, occurring before any consumer sees a page.
- Orders against registrar and host are what make relief effective.
- The principle outlived meta tags — it now governs keyword and metadata practices.
Frequently asked questions
Can using a competitor’s trademark in meta tags be infringement? Yes — the Bombay High Court held that embedding a competitor’s mark in meta tags unlawfully leverages their goodwill by diverting search traffic.
Does it matter that consumers never see meta tags? No — the court focused on the diversion of users through search results rather than on what appeared on the page.
Can a court order a domain registrar or host to act? Yes — here the court directed the registrar to cancel the registration and the host to suspend services, which is what made the relief effective.
Is this still relevant if search engines ignore meta keywords? Yes — the principle that hidden, machine-facing use of a mark to capture traffic is actionable now applies to keyword advertising and other metadata.
Useful official resources
- The Trade Marks Act, 1999
- Bombay High Court