Legal Solution For Cybersquatting

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: The biggest challenge to legislation and judicial interpretation in the last decade has been the need to evolve, interpret and apply the law in the context of the cyber age phenomena. Recently, the Supreme Court has passed a detailed, informed judgement on whether internet domain names are subject to the legal norms applicable to other intellectual properties such as trademarks.

As on date, domain names are not defined under any Indian law. Section 2(z) of the Trade Marks Act, 1999, defines trademarks as marks capable of being represented graphically, distinguishing goods or services of one person from those of others. Mark is defined to include a “name” and any abbreviation thereof. The Act has a wide definition for services extending the ambit in relation to business of any commercial or industrial activity. The short point which the Court had to decide is whether a domain name has the characteristics of a trade or service which is available to potential users of the internet.

The concept of a domain name is new to Indian legal thinking. As such, a domain name is nothing but the address of a website, easily identifiable and user friendly, to enable consumers to connect to the internet. There is an organisation, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which is an international registration authority with limited dispute resolution powers. However, an ICANN registration does not confer any intellectual property rights.

Before the Supreme Court, the appellant, Satyam Infoway (Satyam) had challenged the High Court’s order, which on appeal vacated the Civil Court’s injunction, and permitted the respondent to continue the domain name ‘Siffy’. Satyam’s case was that it was a prior and established user of the trade name ‘Sify’ in the field of internet and computer services. The point of law the respondent raised before the Supreme Court is that a domain name was only an identifying address and not a “property name”. Therefore, an action of ‘passing off’ was legally not available in relation to domain names.

Similar issues had risen before various High Courts earlier. Yahoo had sued one Akash Arora for use of the domain name ‘Yahooindia.Com’ deceptively similar to its ‘Yahoo.com’. As this case was governed by the Trade Marks Act, 1958, the additional defence taken against Yahoo’s legal action for the interim order was that the Trade Marks Act was applicable only to goods.