Delhi High Court orders Amazon to pay Rs 340 crore in damages in Beverly Hills Polo Club case

New Delhi: Delhi High Court has ordered an Amazon unit to pay Rs 340 crore in damages for infringing the "Beverly Hills Polo Club" trademark after garments with identical branding were sold on Amazon's India website, a court order showed on Wednesday.

Indian lawyers called the ruling a landmark judgment in terms of the amount of damages assessed against a US firm in trademark cases. It comes after an India antitrust investigation found Amazon flouted competition laws by giving preference to select sellers on its India website - charges the company denies.

The trademark case was initiated in 2020 by Lifestyle Equities, the owner of "Beverly Hills Polo Club" (BHPC) horse trademark, which alleged Amazon's India shopping website had listings of apparel with a similar logo at a fraction of the price.

The infringing brand was owned by Amazon Technologies and sold on the Amazon India website, the court said.

Amazon's India entity has denied wrongdoing. Company spokespersons in US and India did not respond to Reuters requests for comment on the court order.

"The logo which has been used is hardly distinguishable," the Delhi High Court noted in its 85-page order, which also contained photos of T-shirts comparing the two logos.

Amazon "is well-aware of the exclusive rights of the Plaintiffs in the BHPC mark and logo as it has been involved in litigation" in multiple jurisdictions, including the UK, the Indian court added, issuing a "permanent injunction".

"This is likely the highest damages sum awarded in a trademark infringement suit in India ... It now remains to be seen how this Indian judgment is enforced by the US courts," said Aditya Gupta, a partner at India's Ira Law.

Amazon faced similar allegations in London by Lifestyle Equities in 2019. Last year, Amazon lost an appeal against a ruling that it had infringed UK trademarks by targeting British consumers on its US website.

In 2021, a Reuters investigation, based on thousands of internal Amazon documents, found the US company ran a systematic campaign of creating knockoffs and manipulating search results to boost its own private brands in India.

Praveen Khandelwal, a lawmaker from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party, told Reuters on Thursday the Indian government must take action against Amazon for its "predatory" business practices.

"The court’s decision underscores the critical need for e-commerce platforms to enforce stringent trademark compliance," said Khandelwal, who is also the secretary general of the Confederation of All India Traders which has opposed Amazon's business practices.

In November, India's financial crime fighting agency raided offices of some sellers operating on Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart in a separate investigation into alleged violations of foreign investment rules.

Commenting on the judgment, Mr. Sidhant Goel, Senior Partner at SIM AND SAN, Attorneys At Law, who represented Lifestyle, stated that “This judgment shows that if we as lawyers lead evidence to prove the damages suffered by a litigant, the Courts in India would not deter from passing substantive damage awards”. He further commented that “this becomes the highest ever amount of compensatory damages ever awarded by an Indian Court in any IPR dispute in India, surpassing last year’s Rs.217 Crore lost-profit damage decision that the Firm got for its client in a patent infringement suit”.