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ii. The use of the trademark Christian Louboutin in enlarged overly conspicuous font size as opposed to a normal font size, on their website;

iii. Use of meta-keyword-tags with a view to increasing the hits which the Defendants' websites obtain from search engines like Google;

iv. Use of photographs of Mr. Christian Louboutin on their website;

11. Does every company which runs an e-commerce website automatically come under the definition of intermediary? As per the Information Technology Act, 2000 (hereinafter, 'IT Act') an `intermediary' is defined as under:

"Section 2(w) "intermediary", with respect to any particular electronic records, means any person who on behalf of another person receives, stores or transmits that record or provides any service with respect to that record and includes telecom service providers, network service providers, internet service providers, web-hosting service providers, search engines, online payment sites, online-auction sites, online-market places and cyber cafes."

j. Under Article 15 of the Directive 2000/31, the service providers do not have a general obligation to monitor the information which is transmitted or stored, nor a general obligation to seek facts indicating the illegal activity.

k. Member states of the European Union, however, have the freedom as per their own legal systems of requiring a service provider to terminate or prevent an infringement.

23. The judgment in Google France (supra) was in respect of a paid referencing service called "Adwords". This is enabled by Google through an automated process for selection of key words. Louis Vuitton objected to the sponsored links on Google's search engine to websites which were offering imitation versions of Louis Vuitton products. Similarly, two more companies, one running a travel arrangement service and another running a matrimonial agency had raised issues in respect of the Adwords/ sponsored links provided by Google. Various disputes were referred to the European Court of Justice, and the Court came to the conclusion that a trademark owner is entitled to prohibit an advertiser on the Google Adword programme if the link is originating from a third party. However, if the service provider, who merely provides the internet reference through a keyword or a sign identical to the trademark, does not violate Article 51 of Director 89/104, or 9(1)(a) and (b) of Regulation 40/94.

80. Meta-tagging: The plaintiff has relied upon a judgement in respect of meta-tags. A single judge of the Delhi High Court has held that use of meta- tags is illegal as it enables the Defendant to ride on the reputation of the Plaintiff. Meta tags are links which are provided using keywords. If a trade name is used as a keyword and a link is provided, the website comes up whenever a customer searches for the said trade mark. The trade mark used in the code as a keyword is invisible to the end-user or customer. Such use, though invisible to the customer, has been held to be illegal in the case of Kapil Wadhwa Vs. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. 194 (2012) DLT 23.The Plaintiff claims that when a web user enters the Plaintiff's mark in a search engine such as Google, Darveys.com website is amongst the search results and an analysis of the code shows that the marks of the Plaintiff are used as meta-keyword-tags, with a view to increasing the hits which the Defendant's website obtains from search engines like Google.