IndianFantasyLeague.com

It was reported today that the Madras High Court had issued an injunction today on behalf of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) restraining Sandeep Goyal and Rediff.com from using the domain name IndianFantasyLeague.com.

The BCCI is the main governing body for Cricket in India.  In March, BCCI announced plans to set up a fantasy cricket league, based on the Indian Premier League.  Unfortunately, they did not register a domain for this as far as I can find out.  In any event, one Sandeep Goyal registered the domain name IndianFantasyLeague.com.  He has already been developing and promoting the domain, and has obtained significant sponsorship for his fantasy league.

It looks like the basis for the injunction was that the domain name and the logo is similar to that of the Indian Premier League.  The injunction seems to have been given on an ex parte basis – without any response by the defendants.  It appears that the case will be heard by the court on June 10, at which time I would expect the defendants will have a chance to submit their defences.

Rediff.com has issued a statement that they were simply the registrar in the case and simply issue domain names on a first come, first serve basis when they are applied for.  Indeed, it seems to me that BCCI has way overreached in this case, and Rediff has been improperly included as a party.

While the news report on this is quite scarce on details, the whole case stinks to me.  It’s not clear what was so urgent that an injunction had to be granted so quickly and without any defences being submitted.  This looks to me like a bullying tactic by BCCI to force the defendants to respond under immense time pressure (they have days to respond – it can take days just to find a lawyer).  All the while, BCCI had two months to properly prepare its case and arguments. 

Further, suing Rediff seems like clear overreaching to me and its unfortunate that a company is drawn into a legal battle for a transaction in which they made only a few dollars.  Finally, the domain name itself seems very generic.  Unless there is some trademark that hasn’t been reported, the whole thing smells of a bullying attempt to me.  I hope that Sandeep Goyal stands up to this bullying.  And in the future, companies should realize that before they make a public announcement about something, they should register all the relevant domains.

IDNs Look Promising in India

Some very positive new statistics about the use of the internet in India have been released.  12% or 49 million people are now connected to the internet, with about 35 million of them using the internet at least once per month.

Not surprisingly, the majority of internet users are young – 77% are between the ages of 19 to 35. Surprisingly, India’s net user demographics cuts evenly across socio-economic class.

What’s most interesting about these statistics is the language preference:  “over 70% prefer to access the net in Indian languages, with English users at just 28%, down from 41% in 2007.”  To me, this shows what I’ve been saying all along, which is that people prefer to access the internet in their native language, even if they know English.  This bodes well for IDNs in India.

BhartiWalMart.in and Bharti-Wal-Mart.com

Foreign direct investment is not allowed in the Indian retail industry, unless it is for a single brand store.  To get around this, in early 2007 Walmart and the well established Indian retailer the Bharti Group have partnered up.  Under this agreement, Walmart is the “wholesaler” who provides the goods that the Bharti Group retails.  The partnership does business under the name Bharti Wal-Mart Pvt. Ltd.

Unfortunately, despite being multi-billion dollar companies, they did not think to secure domains with their name in it.  As a result, a cybersquatter, Somesh Gupta from Bangalore registered the domains BhartiWalMart.in and Bharti-Wal-Mart.com.

Bharti Wal-Mart Pvt. Ltd. brought action against the cybersquatter in the Delhi High Court.  The court has made an order restraining the cybersquatter from using the domain names.

It’s not clear to me why Bharti Wal-Mart decided to take action via the High Court rather than the UDRP and INDRP – perhaps combining both domains into one case was more convenient.

Indian Domain Law – Interview with Pravin Anand

Pravin Anand is known as the leading IP lawyer in India. So, I’m very excited and thankful to Mr. Anand for taking some time out of his busy schedule to clarify the often mysterious law regarding domains in India. You can find a brief biography of Mr. Anand here. You can also find out more about Mr. Anand’s legal career and how he got into intellectual property law in this interview by Halsbury India.
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