India - High Court Holds Domain Name Similar to Trademark
http://www.ladas.com/BULLETINS/1999/0399Bulletin/India_HighCourtDomainName.html


At 10:52 AM 6/27/2000 +0530, Yep's wrote:
>I feel this is totally unfair on the part of govermental and justice
>agencies making such decisions.
>
>So if a cyber squatter got the domain name you wanted before you then your
>bad luck that you didn't think of it before. Everything is a matter of
>investment and the cyber squatter has made a investment and he has every
>right to expect you to pay heavily for your domain name if you want it that
>bad.

Exactly.  And the Trademark owner has made an investment in the name, 
generating goodwill, and he has every right to expect the cyber squatter to 
pay heavily for his name.  Make sense?  Me neither.

>Therefore moral of the story is:- Get the domain name before anyone gets it
>(i.e. if you feel you will be a famous personality/setting up an upcoming
>company soon)

This is The Wrong Way(tm).  You are forcing me to pre-emptively register my 
domain in all 6 TLDs, and 140 ccTLDs.  The zone files just grew 
bigger.  Much bigger.

British courts have recently, in the case of Julia Roberts and some 
authors, applied Trademark laws to get to the same decision.  They are not 
saying I can't register tanishq.com, but I can't use it in a way that 
impinges on the "goodwill".  This is similar to case law currently, I can 
not start a "Tanishq Watch Strap Co", but I can start a "Tanishq Goat Milk 
and Cheese Co", (I assume that Titan is not in this business).

My point is that these cases are well handled under current law.

-- Ghane


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