A few unknown parties were recently temporarily prevented from acting without authorization as Starbucks franchisees by the Delhi High Court. In the case of Starbucks Corporation and Anr v. National Interest Exchange of India, Justice C. Hari Shankar observed that the Court was bound to intervene because the case involved imposters posing as Starbucks franchisees without authorization. As a result, the Court made the plaint a suit.
“The case being one of unlicensed imposters posing as franchisees of the plaintiffs without authorization, the Court is bound to intervene.” “Let the plaint be registered as a suit in the circumstances,” the order stated.
Starbucks approached the Court claiming that unidentified parties were deceiving the general public by falsely claiming to be authorized Starbucks franchisees.
It brought a few such domain names, such as starbucks-franchise.com, www.starbucksfranchise.in, and starbucksfranchise.co.in, to the Court’s attention.
The plaint further expressed that the cash procured by the unapproved delegates was being stored in a bank in Mumbai’s Lower Parel. As a result, the plaintiffs asked the court to prevent these entities from defrauding the public and stealing money.
Subsequent to enlisting the plaint as a suit, the Court gave request to the litigants and looked for composed proclamations in 30 days or less.
The Court issued a returnable notice on the application for interim injunctive relief on July 24, 2023.
In addition, it instructed Google to inform the plaintiffs of the email ID’s owner and to disable the unapproved email address starbucksdealership@gmail.com.
The Court also ordered access to the domain names mentioned in the plaint to be blocked.
In addition, it ordered the bank to reveal the account holder’s identity to the Court and to freeze the account number mentioned in the plaint.
Last but not least, the Court mandated that the plaintiffs’ phone number be blocked and that the number’s owner’s identity be made public.
The blockings are to go on till the following date of hearing.
Advocates Priya Adlakha, Bindra Rana, Rima Majumdar and Shilpi Sinha showed up for Starbucks.
Advocate Alexander Mathai represented the Indian National Internet Exchange.
By:- Yuvraj Sachdeva, BA+LLB(2nd Semester), RNB Global University
