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The INDRP case of Mentis.in was recently released.

As you are probably aware, Mentos are the makers of various candies, mints and chewing gum. They have held trademarks for the word Mentos since 1966 and a trademark for the word Mentos in India since 1983.

In this case, Mentos claimed that the domain Mentis.in was confusing and almost identical to their trademark Mentos.

I find it really strange that they would choose to go after Mentis.in when they do not even own Mentis.com – actually, Mentis.com is owned by none other than Frank Schilling. I have checked Mentis in a few other ccTLDs and it does not appear that Mentos owns any of those domains.

While there is no website on Mentis.in, the owner was in the software business, and was using the domain for internal purposes. He showed the panel how he had set up a number of systems there, including for stock maintenance, sales, awards, etc. He also had a plan for further development of the domain. As well, the respondent had never tried to sell the domain to Mentos.

The decision was made by a sole arbitrator. He found that Mentos and Mentis were indeed confusingly similar.

However, the arbitrator found that the owner of Mentis.in had a legitimate interest in the domain. He was making a bona fide use of the domain, and that the goods and services offered by him were completely different than those offered by Mentos. He had no intention to mislead, divert Mentos’ customers or tarnish Mentos’ trademark.

As well, the arbitrator found that Mentis.in was not registered or used in bad faith. The registrant had never tried to sell the domain to Mentos, plus the services offered by both companies were so different that there was little possibility of confusing by consumers.

In the circumstances, the arbitrator dismissed Mentos’ case. This was a good decision under the INDRP. Mentis is a generic term. It is Latin for “mind” and also a surname. It is a common word – there are many, many websites out there using the term mentis in their domain. As well, the chances of people getting confused between software and candy are, I’d say, pretty slim. I’ve never gotten a sugar high from a piece of software. I’m glad to see that the panellist saw through the Mentos’ blatant overreaching in this case.

Today the auction, run by Fusu, for Canada’s first domain name conference – Domain Convergence – finished.

A total of 11 domains sold for $17,501.  What was interesting were a couple of good .ca sales – Quality.ca for USD$4,800 and Climb.ca for USD$2,500 - solid prices for these domains.

The results in full (unofficial) are (in US Dollars):

CanadaTrademarks.net – $220
CanadianPub.com – $420
Quality.ca – $4800
DownloadPDFs.com – $120
ChargerKits.com – $310
CelebrityNews.ca  – $230
Climb.ca – $2500
BuyLand.ca – $100
uDonate.net – $2500
ParkingDemo.com – $101
dqf.com – $6200 – a very solid result given that qav.com closed at $4,700 today at auction on Sedo.

I hope that this conference becomes a regular event and thanks to the organizers for putting this together.

IndianFantasyLeague.com

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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.

Mainstream Media Coverage of .IN Domains

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There is an interesting article today in the Business Standard covering the Indian domain space.  Some salient quotes:

The .in registrations on the internet have grown almost 70 times over the last four years – from 6,500 in 2004 to 230,000 in 2007.

And, between October 2007-March 2008, almost doubled to 440,000, thanks to the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) reducing its wholesale prices to Rs 100. The rates have normalised since April 1.

an NIXI official maintained that he expects around 10,000 .in domain registrations every month

Till 2006, while India rated 63 per cent in the usage of .in domain names, 37 per cent were registered outside India. Over 150 countries are represented by .in domain owners.

The most popular ones are India, the US and Germany, accounting for over 81 per cent registrations, followed by the UK, the Netherlands, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Switzerland, Italy, and China.

Mumbai-based Directi and Delhi-based Net4 India control 70 per cent of the domain names business between them.

The .in space is growing quickly and the speed at which it is growing seems to be increasing.  Hold on for the ride!

The on again, off again sale of IIT.in looks like it has finally concluded.  This time the buyer is none other than the former owner of these forums, Steve, so I’m confident the sale will be completed.  (Heh, hopefully the funds from selling the forum came in handy).  The final sale price is $5,900 – a good deal for both the buyer and the seller.  Congratulations!

Special Indian domain registration giveaway

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Many thanks for being a reader of INForum.in

We’re delighted to announce that we are giving away three prizes during the month of June.

1st Prize: $100 of domain registrations
2nd Prize: $50 of domain registrations
3rd Prize: $25 of domain registrations

What do you have to do to enter? Simply post on INForum.in. At the end of the month we will choose June three posts at random to win the prizes. The more you post – the more chance you have of winning.

The free domain registration will be available via AllediaDomains.com which is an Enom reseller, meaning that you can easily push the domain elsewhere if needed.

Wow! What a day for Indian domains dropping.

On Wednesday May 2nd we saw a large number of premium names become available again. Most lasted only seconds before being snapped up:

There may be some people regretting those drops while Indian internet users triple in the next three years.

Indian Domains Popular for Web 2.0 Sites

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It seems as it the need to get sensible, easy to remember domain names is really helping out the Indian domain space.

Instead of making up a nonsense word or dropping all the vowels in order to get into the .com space (Squeeeedadle.com, Phtgrphy.com etc.) some companies are turning to .in domains.

It makes sense as there are so many domain hacks possible with the .in ending, plus .in can mean internet of course.