Trap Purchases and Manufactured Jurisdiction in Indian IP Litigation A study of SML Ltd. v. M/s Happy Agro Chemicals and the doctrine of trap transactions Introduction In intellectual property disputes, few procedural issues matter as much as deciding where a case can be filed. The choice of court often shapes the entire journey of the case — from how quickly interim orders are granted, to the attitude of the local lawyers, to the practical burden placed on a defendant who must fight far from home. Because the forum is so important, plaintiffs sometimes try to influence it. The most common method is the trap purchase : a test buy arranged by the plaintiff, where an investigator pretends to be a regular customer, purchases the allegedly infringing product, and keeps the invoice and packaging. Later, this evidence is used not only to show infringement but — more controversially — to argue that the cause of action arose within the territory of the chosen court. Tra...
Keyword Advertising and Trademark Infringement: MakeMyTrip India Pvt. Ltd. v. Booking.com B.V. & Ors.
Background By order dated April 27, 2022, Justice Pratibha M. Singh of the Delhi High Court granted an interim injunction in favor of MakeMyTrip India Private Limited ("MMT") in its suit against Booking.com B.V. and others. MMT had sued to protect its registered trademarks "MakeMyTrip" and its variants, which Booking.com was using as keywords on Google's Ads Program to trigger its own advertisements in Google search results. MMT's grievance was that a search for "MakeMyTrip" frequently displayed, as the very first result in the advertisement category, a sponsored listing for Booking.com — one of MMT's principal competitors. MMT argued that such use of its registered mark by a direct competitor amounted to trademark infringement. Booking.com's Defense Booking.com resisted the injunction on several grounds: It relied on the European Commission's decision in Case AT.40428 — Guess , dated December 17, 2018 (the " Guess decision"...