On Monday, the Delhi High Court instructed Google LLC to halt the URLs associated with specific Google forms that were soliciting invitations for a ‘Starbucks franchise’ in a case titled Starbucks Corporation and Anr v. National Internet Exchange of India and Ors.
It’s essential to highlight that Starbucks does not operate on a franchise model in India.
Justice Anish Dayal held the opinion that Starbucks was entitled to relief because impostors were posting these Google Forms to extract private information and data from the general public.
According to the court order, “In the opinion of this Court, the plaintiffs would be entitled to the relief they seek in this application, on account of not only that these Google Forms are being posted by imposters in order to elicit information relating to Starbucks franchise (which do not exist in India) as well as seeking private information and data from the general public, which cannot be countenanced.”
The court was addressing an application within a trademark and copyright infringement suit filed by Starbucks. In April 2023, the court had granted an interim injunction in favor of Starbucks. However, after certain entities were identified impersonating Starbucks franchisees through Google forms, Starbucks sought to have the URLs to these forms suspended.
Starbucks’ legal representatives stated that the impostors were attempting to gather information from the public for applying to non-existent Starbucks franchise opportunities in India. Google LLC’s counsel expressed no objection to the relief sought, as long as the listed URLs pertained to the subject matter of the suit.
Upon confirmation from Starbucks’ counsel that the listed URLs in the complaint were solely related to Google Forms collecting information for Starbucks franchises, the court ordered the suspension of these URLs within a week.
Advocates Rima Majumdar and Shilpi Sinha represented Starbucks, while Google LLC was represented by Advocates Neel Mason, Vihan Dang, Ujjawal Bhargava, and Pragya Jain. Advocates Harish Vaidyanathan Shankar, Srish Kumar Mishra, Alexander Mathai Paikaday, and Krishnan V appeared for the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, and Advocate Chhavi Arora represented the National Internet Exchange of India.
