The Delhi High Court has ruled against Google in a landmark trademark case, permanently stopping it from allowing competitors to buy the brand name ‘Hindware’ as an advertising keyword on Google Ads. Justice Mini Pushkarna, in a judgment dated 22 May, also ordered Google to pay Rs 30 lakh in damages to Hindware. The ruling settles a question Indian courts had not fully addressed before: does buying a competitor’s brand name as a hidden search keyword count as trademark infringement? And is Google responsible for making it possible? The answer to both, the court said, is yes.
In 2013, sanitaryware brand Hindware discovered that rivals Cera Sanitaryware and Grohe had purchased ‘HINDWARE’ as a keyword on Google Ads. When users searched specifically for Hindware, sponsored links for these competitors appeared above Hindware’s own listing. Customers looking for one brand were being quietly redirected to another. Cera and Grohe eventually settled with Hindware directly. Google chose to fight the case, arguing it had no responsibility for how advertisers used its platform.
The court found against Google on every major argument it made. Google claimed that because the keyword is hidden from users and never appears in the visible ad text, it does not count as trademark use. The court disagreed, ruling that the Trade Marks Act covers using a brand name in advertising without the owner’s permission, and that a hidden keyword driving a competitor’s ad is exactly that. The judgment draws a parallel with hidden website meta-tags used to divert traffic: invisible to the user, but still a legal infringement.
As the judgment puts it: “Invisible use of trademark to divert the traffic from proprietors’ website to the advertisers’ website shall amount to use of the mark.”
Google also argued it was protected as a neutral platform under the Information Technology Act’s safe harbour provisions. The court rejected this too. Google’s own Keyword Planner tool actively suggests trademarked names to advertisers, Google auctions those keywords and earns money every time someone clicks a sponsored link triggered by another brand’s name. That level of active involvement, the court found, disqualifies Google from claiming it is a neutral bystander. Its policy of refusing to investigate trademark complaints about keywords made things worse, not better.
As the judgment states: “Google cannot be permitted to shrug off responsibility by making available a tool that leads to infringement, and then turning around to claim that the said tool was not mandatory.”
Buying a competitor’s brand name as a keyword to intercept their search traffic is a common practice across Indian digital marketing, from D2C brands to fintechs to edtech platforms. This ruling makes clear that both the advertiser doing it and the platform enabling it can be held legally liable. Google now faces pressure to change how it handles trademark complaints in India and brands that have been bidding aggressively on rival names are the most exposed to this ruling.