Abstract

The growth of the internet has changed the way businesses identify themselves and connect with consumers. In this changing environment, domain names are no longer used only as web addresses; they have also become important business identifiers. This article examines the Delhi High Court’s decision in Info Edge (India) Pvt. Ltd. v. Shailesh Gupta, a significant case dealing with domain-name protection, passing off and typosquatting in India. The case concerned the well-known domain name “naukri.com” and a deceptively similar domain name used by a competing employment website to divert internet users. The article analyses how the Court approached the protection of a descriptive term that had acquired distinctiveness through continuous use and goodwill. It also considers the Court’s reliance on the principles of passing off and the bad-faith standard under the ICANN UDRP. While the decision provided important protection against the misuse of domain names and helped establish the trademark-like character of domain names in Indian law, certain aspects of the reasoning remain open to criticism. In particular, the article examines the limited evidence relied upon to establish secondary meaning, the use of UDRP principles within Indian common-law reasoning, and the Court’s approach to confusion caused at the initial stage of accessing a website. The article further highlights the difficulty of protecting descriptive and vernacular words without unnecessarily restricting their legitimate use by competitors. It concludes that Info Edge remains an important foundation of Indian cyber-IP jurisprudence, but its principles need to be applied with greater evidentiary and doctrinal care as new forms of online infringement continue to emerge.