The Delhi HC in a consolidated judgment led by Dabur India Limited v. Ashok Kumar and Colgate Palmolive Company & Anr. v. NIXI & Anr.^[1] dated December 24, 2025, passed a landmark Order which treats large scale misuse of well-known marks in domain names as a systemic cyber fraud issue rather than a conventional trademark dispute.

The Delhi HC reaffirmed that domain names function as trademarks and their confusing similarity can cause diversion and deception, warranting passing off and trademark remedies. Crucially, the Delhi HC moves beyond defendant specific injunctions and fashions an ex-ante governance mechanism and provides for ecosystem level remedies against the entire infrastructure enabling such frauds.

The Delhi HC apart from granting reliefs to the plaintiffs with respect to their infringed domain names, issued major directions with respect to the issues and parties involved in this matter namely: (i). DNRs and Registry Operators – should not mask details of registrants on a default ‘opt-out’ basis and privacy protection should only be provided if specifically chosen by the registrant; (ii) Government should consider nomination of a nodal agency such as NIXI, as data repository for India with respect to Registry Operators and DNRs, which maintain details related to registrants on a periodic basis and such data is readily available to courts, law enforcement agencies and the governmental authorities for the purpose of enforcement of Orders of Courts and for preventing misuse and further, that such data is localized for India access; (iii) ‘Dynamic +’ injunction – same will be applicable under circumstances where (a) brand/trademark appears as it is in the domain name, (b) brand/trademark appears with a prefix or suffix which could lead to confusion, and (c) brand/trademark appears as an alphanumeric variation; and (iv). Banks to implement ‘Beneficiary Bank Account Name Lookup’ and abide by Standard Operating Procedure dated May 31, 2024, issued by Central Economic and Intelligence Bureau for processing and responding to requests received from law enforcement agencies. The Delhi HC was of the view that this would allow remitters to verify the name of the bank account to which money is being transferred to before initiating the transfer, thereby preventing mistakes and fraud.

[1] Colgate Palmolive Company & Anr. v. NIXI & Anr. (CS(COMM) 193/2019) & I.As. 5399/2019, 11497/2019, 18216/2019, 15451/2021, 31775/2024.