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Informist, Wednesday, Mar. 11, 2026

 

NEW DELHI – In a relief to Info Edge (India) Ltd., the owner of online job portal naukri.com, the Delhi High Court has set aside a Registrar of Trademarks order to register 'naukriyan' mark belonging to Pradeep Namdeo, the group chief executive officer of naukriyan.com. The high court asked the trademarks registry to remove the 'naukriyan' trademark within four weeks.

 

"Undoubtedly, the word 'naukri' is a Hindi word for 'job' in English, while 'naukriyan' is a plural for the Hindi word 'Naukri' and would connote 'jobs' in English, which by itself cannot be said to be such an essential distinctive feature so as to not create confusion or deception in the mind of the general public," said the court. Thus, the mark 'naukriyan' is deceptively similar and most likely to confuse the general public, it added.

 

The court said that both the job portals of Info Edge as well as Namdeo were providing similar services, which too would mean that the consumer base was common. The services availed of by the class of persons may not really be vigilant as to whose services they seek to avail, which too propels this court to disagree with the findings of the trademarks registry, said Justice Tushar Rao Gedela.

 

The trademarks registry also failed to take into consideration the judgments and orders passed by the court in cases whereby infringers using different forms of the word 'naukri' registered in the name of Info Edge were injuncted from such infringement, said Justice Gedela. "...it is clear that the word 'naukri' is in fact an essential and dominant part of the rival marks, and thus, the rule of antidissection may not apply to the facts of the present case," he added.

 

The petitioner had said that it registered its domain name www.naukri.com in 1997 and applied for trademark registration in 1999. The trademarks registry ought to have considered that the application of Namdeo for the mark 'naukriyan' was neither honest nor bonafide, and rather a dishonest adoption of the registered trademark of the petitioner, said Info Edge.

 

Namdeo's mark contains the whole of the petitioner's trademark 'naukri' as its leading, essential and memorable feature, said Info Edge. Once the essential features of the earlier trademarks are shown to be present in the trademark in question, the alleged differences in the other parts of the mark would be immaterial, said the petitioner.

 

At 1333 IST, the shares of Info Edge (India) Ltd. were trading 1.9% lower at INR 958.40 on the National Stock Exchange.  End

 

IST, or Indian Standard Time, is five-and-a-half hours ahead of GMT

 

Reported by Surya Tripathi

Edited by Deepshikha Bhardwaj

 

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