Supreme Court with Booking.com, Make My Trip and Google Ads Programme
The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to entertain a plea by online travel booking portal MakeMyTrip which had alleged that its trademark was being infringed by Booking.com through Google Ads program. MakeMyTrip India Private Limited vs Google LLC and ors.
MakeMyTrip moved the Court arguing that because of the Google Ads program, search results for “MakeMyTrip” would throw up sponsored links to Booking.com, a direct competitor.
However, a bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud with Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra expressed reservations over whether any case for trademark infringement could be made out since there was no scope of confusion between the services offered by MakeMyTrip and Booking.com.
“There is no possibility of any confusion. If you want to work on MakeMyTrip, then why will you log into Booking.com? This is not an issue which is res integra. They are not using your mark as well…