Breather For Dream11 As Delhi HC Orders Shuts Down Of Copycat Website “Dream11 Team”

The Delhi high court has restrained sports platform “Dream11 Team” from using the logo or any other trademark, which are “deceptively similar” to that of the plaintiff Sporta Technologies Private Limited’s trademarks and logo.

The high court on Monday (September 7) also asked the defendant to take down the infringing material from its social media pages. This came on a plea filed by Sporta Technologies Private Limited, which is the proprietor of the registered trademark “Dream11″, a fantasy sports platform.

A single-judge bench of Justice Rajiv Shakdher said that the defendant Dream11 team, its proprietor, partner, employees and agents are restrained from using the mark “Dream11” and the logo set or any other trademark similar to the plaintiffs’ logo.

“GoDaddy, LLC is directed to suspend/block the defendant’s domain name dream11team.com,” the bench said arraying the website registrar as a defendant to the instant proceedings, asked them to file a reply on the plaint and listed the matter for further hearing on October 6.

The plaintiff said that it is aggrieved by the fact that the defendant has “slavishly adopted an identical trademark” and trade logo and, therefore, has created confusion in the minds of the consumers.

Online fantasy sports startup Dream11 has won the title rights for Indian Premier League (IPL) 2020 after bidding INR 222 Cr (nearly $33.5 Mn). It has outbid Tata Sons, and edtech giants Unacademy and BYJU’S.

Dream11 has won the title rights at almost half the value of what former title sponsor Vivo used to pay.

Dream11 is already an official partner and sponsor of the IPL. However, title sponsorship rights are different, as the company’s name will be displayed on umpire’s jerseys and various other branding material for the league such as stadium tickets, billboards, fan merchandise, among other things. The league’s name itself is rebranded to include the name of the title sponsor, as in ‘Dream11 IPL’.

The IPL title sponsorship rights offer companies an opportunity to expand their presence globally due to the sporting events’ popularity. The popularity of the event may also be increased this year as IPL will be one of the very few sporting competitions which would be happening around the time could mean that viewer interest would be very high.

The tournament is broadcast in more than 30 countries, besides digital streaming in even more countries through Disney+ Hotstar. The brand value of the IPL was $6.7 Bn in 2019, according to financial consultancy firm Duff and Phelps.