A luxury hotel chain with resorts across Thailand, the Maldives, Portugal, and the United Arab Emirates has just stopped an Ahmedabad real estate project from using its name, and the Delhi High Court did not need to hear from the other side to reach that conclusion. In MHG IP Holding Singapore Pte Ltd & Ors v. Anantara Galleria and Anantara & Anr., Justice Jyoti Singh granted an ex parte ad interim injunction restraining a real estate developer from using ANANTARA, ANANTARA GALLERIA, and the domain anantara.life for a housing project that had, by the time the suit reached court, already been under construction for three years. The order is a clean illustration of how Indian courts now treat branded real estate as squarely within the reach of a hospitality trademark, and how far a global reputation built almost entirely outside India can still travel when a domestic developer borrows a famous name.
The Anantara Story Behind The Suit
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The plaintiffs form part of Minor International Public Company Limited, known globally as Minor Hotel Group, an operator that runs over 636 hotels, resorts, and serviced suites along with more than 2,684 restaurants across 68 countries. The group adopted the ANANTARA trademark in 2000 and opened its first property under that name in Hua Hin, Thailand, the following year. It now owns, operates, or manages more than 50 luxury hotels, resorts, and serviced apartments together with over 30 spas carrying the ANANTARA name across Thailand, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, the Maldives, Mozambique, Portugal, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Qatar. ANANTARA Spa has been named the World’s Best Hotel Spa Brand for four consecutive years at the World Spa Awards.
In India specifically, the group operates Anantara Jewel Bagh in Jaipur, a heritage property that won Global Winner honours for Best Luxury Wedding Destination and Best Luxury Cultural Hotel at the Luxe Global Awards 2025. The plaintiffs also placed before the Court figures on Indian visitor numbers to their properties since 2008, a recent strategic partnership with MakeMyTrip opening up more than 560 global properties to Indian travellers, and extensive coverage in publications such as Conde Nast Traveller, Forbes, and The New York Times. This was not a company relying on a single registration certificate to prove its reputation, it came armed with revenue figures, promotional spend, social media reach, and a documented history of pursuing domain name cancellations against copycats under the international UDRP process and India’s own INDRP mechanism.
What The Defendants Were Doing
Against that backdrop, the defendants had been developing a residential project in Ahmedabad called ANANTARA GALLERIA AND ANANTARA since at least 2023, marketing it through mainstream property portals including 99acres.com, Housing.com, addressbox.com, and easyprops.com, along with an Ahmedabad Property Expo. The plaintiffs said they only discovered this use in September 2025, which meant the project had operated for roughly two years before it came onto Minor Hotel Group’s radar, a reminder that even a vigilant global brand cannot watch every regional property listing simultaneously.
Once discovered, the plaintiffs moved quickly by the standards of civil litigation. A cease and desist notice went out on 6 September 2025, followed by reminders in October and November that year when no response arrived.
Notice, Mediation, And A Curious Move In Between
Because the plaintiffs were not seeking urgent interim relief at that initial stage, the Commercial Courts Act required them to attempt pre institution mediation before filing suit, and they initiated that process in January 2026. What happened during mediation is the most telling part of this entire dispute. The defendants indicated a willingness to resolve the matter amicably, yet at the very same time filed their own trademark applications for ANANTARA formative marks in Class 37, the class covering construction and building services. They eventually withdrew from mediation in June 2026 without any settlement, continued marketing the project under the ANANTARA name, and by this point had also built out a full online identity around it, including the domain anantara.life and matching Facebook and Instagram accounts.
Filing a trademark application for the very mark under discussion while simultaneously professing openness to settle is not conduct that inspires confidence in a party’s good faith, and although the Court’s order does not dwell on this sequence at length, it forms an important part of the factual picture that made an ex parte injunction an easy call once the matter finally reached a judge.
Why Real Estate Counts As An Allied Service To Hospitality
One argument the defendants might have made, had they shown up, is that hotels and residential real estate are different businesses entirely, so a hospitality trademark should not block a housing project. The Court did not see it that way, and the commercial reality supports its view. Branded residential development attached to hospitality names has become a recognisable business model worldwide, with luxury hotel groups routinely extending their brands into residences, serviced apartments, and property management. Given that reality, a consumer encountering ANANTARA GALLERIA in a property listing has a genuine reason to assume some connection to the hospitality group of the same name, particularly when the developer’s own online presence borrows so heavily from the plaintiffs’ branding conventions.
Indian trademark law has long recognised that infringement analysis is not confined to identical goods or services listed on a certificate of registration, protection extends to allied and cognate services where confusion is likely, and well known marks receive an even wider zone of protection against use on entirely different goods or services if that use is likely to take unfair advantage of or cause detriment to the mark’s distinctive character. The Court’s finding that real estate qualifies as allied to hospitality and residential services sits comfortably within that framework rather than stretching it.
Establishing Reputation Without A Large Indian Footprint
A more interesting doctrinal question lurking beneath this case is how a brand with only one hotel physically located in India managed to establish the kind of reputation needed to secure an injunction covering the whole country. Indian courts answered this question decades ago through what has come to be known as the transborder reputation doctrine, most famously articulated by the Supreme Court in N.R. Dongre v. Whirlpool Corporation, which held that a mark can enjoy protectable goodwill in India even without extensive direct commercial activity here, so long as its reputation has genuinely travelled into the country through channels like international media, travel, and increasingly the internet.
The plaintiffs built exactly this kind of record, pointing to global revenue figures, promotional expenditure, features in travel publications available in India, a documented base of Indian travellers who have booked ANANTARA properties since 2008, and a fresh commercial tie up with a major Indian travel platform. Add to that a genuine Indian hotel in Jaipur carrying prestigious awards, and the reputation argument moves well beyond the realm of a purely foreign brand asking Indian courts for protection it has not earned locally.
The Domain Name As Part Of The Infringement
The Court’s order was careful to restrain not only the physical marks and project names but also the domain anantara.life along with the associated social media handles. Indian courts settled the question of whether domain names fall within the scope of trademark and passing off law back in Satyam Infoway Ltd. v. Sifynet Solutions Pvt. Ltd., where the Supreme Court held that a domain name serves the same source identifying function as a trademark and can be protected on the same principles. Given how much of the defendants’ marketing ran through property portals and social media rather than physical advertising, restraining the digital footprint alongside the trademark itself was necessary to make the injunction actually effective rather than merely symbolic.
Why This Was Granted Without Hearing The Other Side
An ex parte ad interim injunction under Order XXXIX Rules 1 and 2 of the Code of Civil Procedure is available at the very first hearing of a suit, and Indian courts grant it when the plaintiff shows a strong prima facie case, a balance of convenience favouring interim protection, and a likelihood of irreparable harm without immediate relief. All three elements were present here in a fairly emphatic form, a registered mark with global recognition, an unresponsive defendant who had already tried to register the same mark for himself, and continuing commercial activity that could mislead property buyers making decisions worth significant sums of money. The Court also noted that notice had already been served through an advance copy and that the matter had been passed over twice without anyone appearing for the defendants, a detail that reinforced rather than substituted for the merits based analysis. As is standard practice after any ex parte order, the plaintiffs were directed to comply with Order XXXIX Rule 3 CPC, which requires prompt notice to the opposite side, within two weeks.
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Conclusion
A global hospitality brand with genuine and well documented Indian reputation, facing a defendant who tried to secure the same mark through the Trade Marks Registry while stringing along a mediation process, presents about as clean a case for interim relief as this kind of dispute produces. The transborder reputation and allied services findings are not novel legal ground, but the order applies them carefully rather than mechanically, and the decision to bring the domain name and social media identity within the same restraint shows an appreciation for how real estate is actually marketed today. None of this finally decides the case, the defendants have simply not yet had their say, and the matter returns before the Court in November 2026 when a genuine contest on the merits may finally begin. Until then, this order stands as a useful template for how established international brands can protect their name from being repurposed for entirely unrelated ventures that happen to share a market for consumer trust.
