No URLs, no say on the merits: Delhi HC sends IndiaMART to trial court for delisting clarity

A Delhi High Court Division Bench held that IndiaMART, directed to remove infringing listings in a family-trade-mark dispute, cannot argue the merits of the Section 9 injunction, and gave it liberty to ask the Commercial Court to clarify which listings must go.

A Dwarka court ordered IndiaMART to take down infringing listings of one brother’s products, but did not name the URLs. On 5 November 2026 the Delhi High Court told the platform it has no standing to contest the injunction itself, and that its remedy for the missing detail is to go back to the court that passed the order.

The Division Bench of Justice Prathiba M. Singh and Justice Dinesh Bhatt disposed of IndiaMART Intermesh Limited’s appeal. It did not touch the merits of the order, which it said was not before it.

A 1998 family deed and seven territories

The appeal arose from a petition under Section 9 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996. Mr Ram Avtar Chamria and Mr Rakesh Chamria filed it against their brother, Mr Kamal Kumar Chamria, and several e-commerce companies.

Their case was that a family settlement executed on 24 January 1998 bound the family members, and that Mr Kamal Kumar Chamria was breaking it by offering products on e-commerce platforms.

On 16 September 2026 the District Judge, Dwarka Courts, partly allowed the petition in OMP(I)(COMM) No. 2856/2026. It restrained Mr Kamal Kumar Chamria, and entities under his control including Surya Reliable, from selling the products covered by the deed under the disputed family name or trade marks.

The territories are Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh and Chandigarh. He was also barred from accepting or fulfilling online orders for those products where the delivery address fell in those territories. The restraint runs while the arbitration is pending.

What the Commercial Court found

The petitioners had filed material on the products’ online presence, including Amazon and Flipkart listings with named product codes, and business-to-business listings on IndiaMART, TradeIndia and Shopsy. They also relied on a tax invoice of 15 April 2023 from Surya Reliable to a trader in Uttam Nagar, Delhi, and another of 17 February 2024.

The Commercial Court said it did not have to decide whether each listing had resulted in an actual sale into the petitioners’ territory. The interim order, it said, preserved the written arrangement and did not finally decide who owned any trade mark.

It found that continued sales in the protected territory would dilute the petitioners’ market and erode goodwill, and that the loss would be hard to quantify later. The restraint did not stop Mr Kamal Kumar Chamria from doing business altogether.

Five platforms, no blanket delisting

The Commercial Court relied on the Delhi High Court’s 2026 ruling in Rajeev Behl v. Bhupesh Kumar Dhingra, which holds that Section 9 relief can reach non-signatories to an arbitration agreement. It also noted that such relief must be used sparingly and tied to the subject of the arbitration.

On that footing it found full delisting of all products from all platforms disproportionate, as it could catch products and territories that may turn out to be permitted. It asked the platforms to take reasonable steps instead.

Five platforms were directed to remove infringing listings: Amazon Seller Services Pvt. Ltd., Flipkart Internet Pvt. Ltd., Shopsy Private Limited, IndiaMART Intermesh Limited and Infocom Network Limited, which runs TradeIndia.

For IndiaMART, which told the Commercial Court it is a neutral intermediary offering listing services and not an e-commerce operator, the order was that it must promptly remove infringing listings on notice and follow effective due diligence.

IndiaMART’s grievance: nothing to act on

IndiaMART appealed under Section 37(1)(b) of the Arbitration Act, read with Section 13(1A) of the Commercial Courts Act, 2015. Mr Naman Joshi, with Ms Priya Goyal, appeared for it. No one appeared for the respondents.

Mr Joshi said the platform could not carry such a burden without clarity. The Commercial Court had not ordered delisting of the whole catalogue of Mr Kamal Kumar Chamria, only the infringing listings, yet it had not identified the URLs or the products.

The platform, he said, needed the URLs identified so that it could give effect to the order. The Bench said it was not concerned with the merits of the injunction.

A platform cannot argue the injunction

Justice Singh, who wrote the order, said IndiaMART is not entitled to make submissions on the merits of the injunction. The order puts the platform’s position in one line:

“The only role of Appellant would be to remove and delist the infringing listings.” (para 13)

That confines the appeal to the practical question of how the order is carried out.

How two other courts handled listings

The Bench set out two earlier orders. In Metro Shoes Ltd. v. Tolexo Online (P) Ltd., a single judge of the Bombay High Court accepted the platform’s statement that it was an intermediary that could not police its portal.

The platform there undertook to give the plaintiff the vendor’s contact details within seven working days of a demand. It was then for the plaintiff to seek orders against the vendor directly, and the platform carried no liability for use of the mark.

In Happi Planet Eco Products (P) Ltd. v. Ravi Malani, a 2026 Delhi High Court order granted what the court called a dynamic injunction. The plaintiff could send infringing listings straight to Amazon, Flipkart, Meesho and Jiomart, which had to take them down forthwith, without returning to court.

That order also required the platforms to file a compliance affidavit within two weeks giving the Basic Subscriber Information of the sellers.

From these, the Bench observed that courts have usually directed plaintiffs or aggrieved persons to furnish the list of links to be removed. It did not itself direct the petitioners to do so here.

Order

The Bench held that if there is any ambiguity about which listings are to be taken down, IndiaMART’s purpose would be served by letting it ask the Commercial Court for a clarification.

The appeal was disposed of on 5 November 2026 with liberty to IndiaMART to approach the Commercial Court for clarification or modification, if required. Pending applications were also disposed of.