E-Paper
‘Jodi’ -- a match made for trademark trouble? SC weighs matrimonial app dispute
The Supreme Court is hearing Matrimony.com’s challenge against a Madras HC order restraining its ‘Jodii’ app from using the trademark.
Can anyone claim exclusive rights over the word “Jodi” when it is being used to sell the very service of finding a match? The Supreme Court confronted this deceptively simple question at the heart of a trademark battle between two matrimonial platforms.
The question arose on Friday as the court considered Matrimony.com’s challenge to a Madras High Court order restraining its matchmaking app “Jodii” from using the mark, after the high court found it deceptively similar to Chennai-based FreeElective Network’s “Jodi365”.
A bench of justices PS Narasimha and Alok Aradhe appeared unwilling to interfere with a judicial order restraining Matrimony.com from using “Jodii” as the trademark for its matchmaking app, observing that the injunction was a “fair order”, even as it gave the online matchmaking giant one final opportunity to settle the dispute with FreeElective Network.
“When you say ‘Jodi’ is a generic word, how did you apply for its trademark?” the bench asked senior advocate Akhil Sibal, appearing for Matrimony.com.
Sibal responded that Matrimony.com was no longer pressing for exclusivity over the word and was challenging the Madras High Court’s August 11 decision principally because it had reversed an earlier ruling in the company’s favour.
The bench, however, said the high court order merely operated as an injunction against Matrimony.com’s use of the mark. When Sibal pointed out that nearly 30 lakh users had paid for the service, particularly from middle- and lower-income groups, he offered to change the branding immediately to “Jodii Matrimony” to ensure that the business did not shut down.
Senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayan, representing FreeElective, opted not to counter the proposal.
The bench then gave the parties a week to explore a settlement. “We are all for a resolution,” it said, making clear that if the parties failed to settle, the court would proceed to decide the appeal and that it was inclined to dismiss the appeal.
The dispute pits Matrimony.com’s Jodii, a vernacular matchmaking app launched in 2021, against FreeElective Network’s Jodi365, which has been in use since 2009. FreeElective secured registration for the composite “Jodi365” mark and contended that Matrimony.com’s subsequent adoption of “Jodii” for identical matrimonial services was likely to confuse consumers.
The Madras High Court accepted that contention earlier this month, overturning a 2022 single-judge ruling that had rejected the claim.
The high court’s ruling is significant because it did not treat “Jodi” merely as an ordinary dictionary word buried inside the composite mark “Jodi365”. It held that “Jodi” was the “distinguishing, prominent and essential feature” of the registered mark and that the mark could not be dissected in a manner that deprived its essential element of protection.
That finding directly confronted Matrimony.com’s argument that “Jodi” is descriptive of matchmaking and is widely used by other matrimonial and dating platforms. Matrimony.com had maintained that FreeElective’s registration was only for the composite/device mark “Jodi365” and did not confer a monopoly over “Jodi” itself.
The division bench, however, also took into account the fact that the two businesses offered substantially identical services and that FreeElective was the prior user. It noted evidence of actual consumer confusion, including 11 communications and transcripts placed before it in which consumers confused Jodi365 with Jodii.
The high court also faulted the earlier approach of concentrating on the visual differences between the marks. In trademark disputes, it held, phonetic similarity cannot be ignored. Thus, even though “Jodi365” and “Jodii” may look different as labels, what matters is also how they sound and are perceived by consumers.
For Matrimony.com, the stakes go beyond a change of name. The company told the Supreme Court that millions of users had paid for the Jodii service and that an immediate prohibition could disrupt a platform designed specifically for non-English-speaking users.
For FreeElective, the dispute is about protecting the goodwill it says it built around Jodi365 over nearly two decades. Its counsel told the Supreme Court that the platform had been protected since its launch in 2009, contrasting its single registered mark with Matrimony.com’s hundreds of trademark registrations.
The Madras High Court had also directed Matrimony.com to surrender and destroy materials bearing the Jodii mark, while declining FreeElective’s demand for ₹1 crore in damages for want of sufficient evidence to establish the extent of its losses.
