An Indian court has ruled that an Amazon (AMZN.O) subsidiary must pay $39 million in damages for selling counterfeit “Beverly Hills Polo Club” (BHPC) branded apparel on its Indian marketplace, according to a court order issued on Wednesday.
Legal experts in India say this judgment is significant, as it marks one of the highest financial penalties imposed on a U.S.-based company in a trademark infringement case. The decision follows an earlier antitrust investigation that accused Amazon of favoring certain sellers on its platform—an allegation the company has denied.
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The lawsuit was filed in 2020 by Lifestyle Equities, the owner of the BHPC horse logo, which claimed that Amazon’s Indian website was allowing the sale of clothing featuring a nearly identical design at lower prices. The Delhi High Court found that the infringing brand was owned by Amazon Technologies and sold directly through Amazon’s Indian platform.
Amazon’s Indian unit has denied any wrongdoing. Company representatives in both India and the U.S. did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment on the ruling.
In an 85-page verdict, the Delhi High Court stated that the logo in question was “virtually indistinguishable” from the original. The ruling also pointed out that Amazon was fully aware of BHPC’s exclusive rights, given that it has faced litigation over the brand in multiple countries, including the UK. As a result, the court issued a permanent injunction preventing further infringement.
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“This is possibly the largest damages award in an Indian trademark case,” said Aditya Gupta, a partner at India-based Ira Law. “The next challenge will be enforcing this ruling in the United States.”
Amazon has faced similar trademark disputes before. In 2019, Lifestyle Equities sued the company in London, leading to a ruling that Amazon had infringed UK trademarks by selling to British customers through its U.S. website. The company lost an appeal against that decision last year.
A 2021 Reuters investigation, based on internal Amazon documents, revealed that the company had deliberately copied popular products and manipulated search results to promote its own private-label brands in India.
Following the recent ruling, Praveen Khandelwal, a lawmaker from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and secretary general of the Confederation of All India Traders, called on the Indian government to take action against Amazon’s “predatory” business practices.
“This judgment highlights the urgent need for e-commerce platforms to implement stricter trademark enforcement,” Khandelwal told Reuters.
In a separate case, India’s financial crime agency recently raided offices of several sellers operating on Amazon and Flipkart, investigating potential violations of foreign investment regulations.
