Introduction
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The DRS Logistics v. Google case has been running since 2011. It produced a landmark interim order in 2021 on whether using a registered trademark as a keyword in Google Ads amounts to infringement, and a Division Bench affirmation of that order in 2023. It has shaped how courts, advertisers, and trademark owners in India understand the rules of online keyword advertising. Now, in its latest chapter, the Delhi High Court has dismissed a contempt application filed by DRS Logistics against Google India and Google LLC, holding that neither the 2021 single judge order nor the 2023 Division Bench judgment had ever required Google to proactively monitor its advertising platform for trademark misuse. Justice Tejas Karia delivered the judgment on 15 June 2026 in M/S DRS Logistics (P) Ltd. & Anr. v. Google India Pvt. Ltd. & Ors., CS(COMM) 1/2017. The ruling answers a question that has been dividing trademark owners and digital platforms for years: when an earlier judgment records a platform’s commitment regarding trademark protection, does that commitment become a court-directed monitoring obligation, or does it remain a policy matter to be enforced only when the trademark owner raises a specific complaint?
Background
Understanding the contempt application requires understanding how the underlying dispute evolved, because the scope of what the earlier judgments actually directed is the entire point.
DRS Logistics, which operates under the well-known “Agarwal Packers and Movers” brand, filed its original suit in 2011 alleging that Google’s Ads program was permitting third-party advertisers to use its registered marks, “AGARWAL”, “AGGARWAL PACKERS AND MOVERS”, and “DRS Logistics”, as keywords, thereby diverting traffic from DRS’s website to those competitors. The suit sought a permanent and mandatory injunction against trademark infringement, passing off, and unfair competition.
In the course of proceedings, a critical moment arrived in January 2020. Google’s Senior Advocate made a statement before the court, recorded in an order dated 22 January 2020. Google does not allow any third party to put, publish, or refer to a trademark of an owner in the Ad-Text or Ad-Title as per its policy, that policy continues to remain in force, and it would be implemented in favour of DRS. On the strength of that statement, DRS’s Senior Counsel did something that would have lasting consequences for this contempt application, he narrowed the controversy. He told the court that, given Google’s assurance about Ad-Text and Ad-Title, the only question that needed to be decided for interim injunction purposes was whether providing a trademark as a keyword to a third party amounted to trademark infringement.
That narrowing defined the scope of the 2021 judgment. The order dated 30 October 2021 directed Google to investigate any complaint made by DRS alleging use of its trademark and variations as keywords resulting in diversion of traffic, to investigate the overall effect of each advertisement to check whether it infringed or passed off DRS’s marks, and, if so, to restrain the advertiser and remove or block the advertisement. Google and Google India filed appeals. The Division Bench decided those appeals on 10 August 2023, refusing to interfere with the 2021 directions. The question of use of the Subject Marks as keywords remained governed by a complaint-based framework: DRS notifies, Google investigates, Google acts.
What Triggered the Contempt Application
After the 2023 judgment, DRS continued monitoring Google’s platform. In June 2025, DRS’s counsel conducted searches using keywords containing the Subject Marks on multiple dates and found that third-party sponsored links were still appearing in search results when users searched for DRS’s marks. Critically, some of those sponsored links were using the Subject Marks not merely as invisible keywords to trigger advertisements but visibly, in the Ad-Text, Ad-Title, and URLs of the advertisements themselves.
DRS sent a notice on 17 June 2025 informing Google of these appearances and calling for immediate compliance. Google issued a holding response and eventually took down the specific URLs that DRS had flagged, but did so pursuant to its own internal policy and subsequent court directions passed in August 2025 during the pendency of the contempt application rather than immediately and voluntarily on receipt of the notice. DRS then filed the contempt application under Order XXXIX Rule 2A of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 read with Section 12 of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971, seeking action against Google India and Google LLC for willful disobedience of the 2021 and 2023 judgments. The core allegation was that Google, having committed before the court that it would not permit trademark owners’ marks to appear in Ad-Text or Ad-Title, had subsequently allowed exactly that, and had done so without DRS having to file a complaint.
DRS’s Case in the Contempt Application
DRS’s Senior Counsel built the contempt argument around Google’s own prior concessions and admissions.
First, he pointed to the statement recorded in the January 2020 order, which had explicitly asserted that Google’s policy did not permit third parties to use registered trademarks in Ad-Text or Ad-Title, and that this policy would be implemented in favour of DRS. He argued that this statement, having been recorded by the court, was binding on Google as a court-sanctioned commitment and not merely a contractual policy. Its violation was therefore wilful disobedience of a court order.
Second, he pointed to admissions in Google’s own Written Statement. Google’s defence filings had acknowledged that advertisers may select keywords, and where such keywords comprise trademarked terms notified to Google, those terms would not appear in the Ad-Text of any advertisement published by a party that is not the trademark proprietor. The AdWords Trademark Policy, which Google had described as adhered to strictly and uniformly, also ensured that registered trademark terms would not appear in Ad-Title, Ad-Text, or URL. These admissions, DRS argued, amounted to a binding representation that Google had then failed to honour.
Third, and most forcefully, DRS argued that the October 2021 judgment had specifically referenced and recorded the January 2020 statement. That recording made the earlier statement part of the judicial record. Google’s subsequent silence in its reply to DRS’s June 2025 notice on the question of Ad-Text and Ad-Title use, combined with the fact that Google only acted after DRS filed the contempt application, demonstrated willful non-compliance rather than innocent misunderstanding.
Google’s Defence
Google’s Senior Advocate, Mr. Sandeep Sethi, mounted an equally detailed response that turned entirely on the distinction between what the judgments actually directed and what DRS claimed they directed.
The central submission was that the 2021 and 2023 judgments, read carefully, contained directions that were confined to complaints about keyword use. The 2021 judgment directed Google to investigate complaints alleging use of Subject Marks as keywords. It did not contain a separate, freestanding direction to proactively monitor Ad-Text, Ad-Title, or URL for trademark appearances. The broader prayers sought by DRS, including restraint on permitting trademark use in any form, had not been granted in those terms. What was granted was the narrower, complaint-triggered investigation framework.
On the 2020 statement, Google argued it had been made without prejudice, at an interim stage, and was expressly linked to the operation of Google’s policy. Policies, by their own terms, operate on a complaint basis: the trademark owner identifies an infringing advertisement, lodges a complaint, and Google then reviews and acts. The statement had not been converted into an absolute, unconditional judicial direction requiring proactive surveillance.
On the contempt jurisdiction itself, Google relied on three Supreme Court decisions. In Ram Kishan v. Tarun Bajaj & Ors., (2014) 16 SCC 204, the Supreme Court held that contempt proceedings are not maintainable where two reasonable interpretations of the order exist and the conduct complained of was not willful. Three Cheers Entertainment Private Limited & Ors. v. CESE Limited, also affirmed the same. In Sudhir Vasudeva v. M. George Ravishekaran, (2014) 3 SCC 373, the Supreme Court held that only directions which are explicit in a judgment or are plainly self-evident ought to be considered when assessing willful violation, and courts exercising contempt jurisdiction cannot reopen decided issues or invoke corrective powers available in appeal or review.
What the Court Decided
The court accepted that the January 2020 order had recorded Google’s statement about Ad-Text and Ad-Title. It also accepted that this statement, reproduced in paragraph 3 of the October 2021 judgment, remained binding on Google. However, it held that what the statement bound Google to was not a proactive monitoring obligation. The statement was made in the context of Google’s own policy, and that policy is complaint-based. Google’s commitment was that its policy would not permit trademark use in Ad-Text or Ad-Title and would be implemented in favour of DRS. The implementation mechanism of that policy involves the trademark owner lodging a complaint, Google reviewing it, and Google taking action.
Because DRS’s counsel had confined the injunction controversy in 2020 to the keyword question, relying on Google’s Ad-Text and Ad-Title assurance, the 2021 judgment had only examined and directed action on keyword complaints. The judgment had made extensive reference to Google’s policy in the context of Ad-Text and Ad-Title but had not issued separate operative directions on that point. The absence of a specific operative direction was fatal to the contempt claim.
The court stated this in terms that leave little room for misunderstanding. The judgments do not impose any obligation on Google to proactively monitor and prevent the use of the Subject Marks in Ad-Text, Ad-Title, or URL in advertisements of third parties. At the same time, Google remains bound by its recorded statement that such use would not be permitted in terms of its policy. The grievance about Ad-Text, Ad-Title, and URL appearances is governed by Google’s policy, not by the operative directions in the judgments. Under that policy, DRS must notify Google, and Google must then investigate and act expeditiously.
On the specific URLs complained of in the contempt application, the court noted they had already been taken down by Google following DRS’s June 2025 notice, pursuant to subsequent court directions in August 2025. Since the disputed links were gone and no willful disobedience of the explicit directions had been established, the contempt application was dismissed. For future violations, DRS retains the right to notify Google, and Google is directed to investigate and act per its policy as expeditiously as possible.
Keywords-vs-Ad-Text Distinction
The court’s reasoning draws a line that trademark practitioners and digital advertisers must understand clearly, because it defines two different legal territories that this litigation had conflated.
Keyword use and Ad-Text or Ad-Title use are structurally different. When a competitor bids on a trademark as a keyword, the trademark itself is used invisibly as the trigger that causes Google’s algorithm to show that competitor’s advertisement when a user searches for the trademark owner’s brand. The user sees the competitor’s advertisement but does not see the trademark appearing within it. The 2021 and 2023 judgments addressed this scenario: they examined whether invisible keyword use constitutes infringement, and they established a complaint framework for DRS to flag instances where the overall effect of such advertisements was infringing.
When a competitor’s advertisement visibly displays the trademark owner’s mark in the Ad-Text, Ad-Title, or URL, the situation is different. Here the trademark appears explicitly and visibly in the body of a competitor’s advertisement, potentially misleading users into thinking the advertisement is associated with the trademark owner. This is the scenario that Google’s Trademark Policy ostensibly prohibits, and which DRS alleged was continuing despite the judgments. The court found that the judgments had never formally adjudicated or directed action on this second scenario, because DRS had accepted Google’s 2020 representation on that issue and chosen to litigate only the keyword question.
The practical consequence is that DRS must now rely on Google’s policy complaint mechanism for Ad-Text violations, not on contempt proceedings. If Google fails to act expeditiously after receiving a complaint about Ad-Text use, DRS’s remedy lies in filing a fresh application before the court, not in pursuing contempt for breach of the 2021 directions. The analysis of trademark infringement principles and how Indian courts assess confusion in keyword advertising contexts provides the doctrinal foundation for understanding where the infringement line sits in these scenarios.
The Hindware v. Google Contrast
The DRS Logistics contempt judgment deserves to be read alongside the Hindware v. Google case, which a different Delhi High Court bench decided a few months before the contempt ruling and which reached conclusions that sit in some tension with the position Google successfully defended in the contempt proceedings.
In Hindware, the court treated Google’s keyword auction system itself as an act of trademark use and denied Google the benefit of safe harbour protection under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 on the basis that Google was an active, commercially invested participant in the infringement rather than a passive intermediary. In the DRS contempt, the court found that the prior judgments did not require Google to proactively monitor advertisements and that Google’s complaint-based policy was a lawful and sufficient compliance mechanism.
These two positions are not necessarily irreconcilable, but they reflect different frameworks for analysing platform liability in trademark disputes. The Hindware analysis goes to the nature of Google’s participation in the infringing activity; the DRS contempt analysis goes to the scope of the obligations created by specific court directions. They address different questions, but a trademark owner dealing with keyword advertising violations on Google now faces the challenge of navigating between them. The safe harbour question and the proactive monitoring question are separate legal enquiries, and the answers from Delhi courts are currently pointing in different directions. For a fuller treatment of how Indian courts have handled platform liability in the context of intellectual property enforcement, the post on dynamic injunctions and intermediary obligations in IP enforcement sets out the broader framework.
A Lesson for Trademark Litigants
In January 2020, DRS’s Senior Counsel agreed to narrow the scope of the interim injunction dispute to the keyword question alone, in reliance on Google’s statement about Ad-Text and Ad-Title. That decision made tactical sense at the time: DRS had Google’s word on Ad-Text, so why fight two fronts when one was conceded? But the consequence of that narrowing was that the operative directions in the 2021 judgment were limited to keyword complaints, and the court in 2026 was therefore unable to find any breach of those directions when the Ad-Text violations emerged.
Google’s 2020 statement did not disappear from the record; it remains binding as an undertaking. But the enforcement of an undertaking recorded in the body of a judgment is not the same as enforcing an operative direction in the judgment’s order. Contempt jurisdiction attaches to the latter, not to the former. The only recourse for a party aggrieved by breach of a recorded undertaking that was not translated into a court direction is a fresh application, not contempt. DRS finds itself in exactly that position now. What appeared to be a resolved issue in 2020 has come back around as an unresolved one because it was never formally adjudicated or directed. The principle from Sudhir Vasudeva that the Supreme Court established, and that Justice Karia applied here, makes this consequence clear: contempt can only enforce what is explicit and self-evident in the operative part of the order.
For trademark owners engaged in litigation against digital platforms, the lesson is to ensure that every commitment made by a platform in court proceedings is translated into an express operative direction, even if the platform’s counsel offers the commitment voluntarily and apparently without reservation. An undertaking on record is not the same as a direction on record, and that distinction determines what happens when the undertaking is later honoured in the breach. The complete framework of trademark law in India, including the infringement and enforcement principles that govern these disputes, is covered in the guide to trademark law in India.
Also Read: Trademark Disputes: Why a Different Number Isn’t a Brand
Conclusion
The dismissal of DRS Logistics’ contempt application against Google is not a loss on the merits of the underlying trademark claim. Google remains bound by its recorded undertaking that the Subject Marks will not appear in Ad-Text, Ad-Title, or URL of third-party advertisements, and it remains under a binding obligation to investigate complaints and act expeditiously. The court has not said that Google can ignore DRS’s trademark rights. What it has said is that the remedy for future violations lies in complaint and, if Google fails to act, in fresh proceedings, rather than in contempt of a direction that was never formally made.
But that is not the full picture, and any reading of this judgment that treats it as straightforwardly good news for platforms is premature. The court has not said that Google’s complaint-based model is the final word on platform trademark obligations in Indian law. It has said that the specific prior directions in this case did not require more than that. The Hindware bench took a very different view of what Google’s role in keyword advertising entails, and those two readings of platform liability are now both live in Delhi High Court jurisprudence, decided by different judges in overlapping time frames.
Hence, identify the infringing advertisement, document it with screenshots, send a complaint to Google, wait for investigation, and if Google fails to act, return to court. The complaint-based model places the monitoring burden squarely on the trademark owner, which is a significant burden for brands that are frequently targets of keyword misuse. Whether that burden is the right calibration between platform responsibility and trademark protection is a policy question that Indian courts have not yet answered definitively. What this judgment does is confirm that it will not be answered through contempt proceedings confined to directions that were never made.
Case Title: M/S Drs Logistics (P) Ltd & Another vs Google India Pvt Ltd & Anr, Link to the judgement: Click here to read the full judgement
