Mumbai: The Delhi high court on Friday issued an ex-parte order restraining ‘www.exxonmobilecard.com’, a Mumbai-based e-commerce company, from using the domain name following a petition from US-based Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s largest oil and gas company.

Legal matters: ExxonMobil headquarters in Irving, Texas, US. Jon Freilich / Bloomberg

The website has infringed the trademark registered by the Texas-based company in India for several decades, said Anuradha Salhotra, partner at the Delhi-based law firm Lall Lahiri and Salhotra, which represented the oil firm.

The e-commerce firm didn’t answer queries to an email address on the site.

“ExxonMobil Corp. maintains its corporate website as ‘www.exxonmobil.com’ and offers credit card services for its products through Citibank via the website ‘www.exxonmobilcard.com’.

But, the defendant, through its website ‘www.exxonmobilecard.com’, was not only providing access to services of Exxon’s competitors but also to portals of Exxon Mobil itself,” Salhotra said.

The court said there was no logical explanation as to why the defendant chose to use Exxon Mobil in its domain name when it has never been been associated with that company. The court also directed the registrar of the domain name to not renew the registration.