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Indian High Court Claims Jurisdiction Against Chinese Cybersquatter of ICICIGROUP.COM

Malathi Nayak of Livemint has a very interesting article about who has the jurisdiction over Chinese entities if they infringe intellectual property rights via the internet. In this case a Chinese entity had registered the domain name icicigroup.com which is similar to icicibank.com.

First the icicibank tried to get control over the domain name by filing a complaint with the WIPO?s Arbitration and Mediation Center (AMC) using the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy. To no avail.

Malathi Nayak wrote:

"In December, justice Sanjiv Khanna [of India's High Court, IP Dragon] passed an order restraining a resident of Beijing, Chuandong Xu, and a Chinese website registrar, HiChina Web Solutions Ltd, from using or selling the site ICICIGROUP.COM.
The order was passed ex parte or in the absence of the defendant. The same court had heard a 2007 case, in which India TV Independent News Service Pvt. Ltd sued US-based India Broadcast Live Llc. over thewww.indiatvlive.com domain name. In October, it dismissed India TV?s suit and allowed India Broadcast Live to use the name.
The two cases mark a trend where Indian courts are ruling on cybersquatting cases involving people and firms from different geographies?not all of which may fall under their jurisdiction."

The enforceability of such cross-border rulings are in general doubtful. However, Saikrishna Rajagopal, partner at Saikrishna and Associates, who filed the suit for ICICI bank, said that the Chinese defendants have complied with the high court order.

Read more Malathi Nayak's article here.

Full post as published by IP Dragon on January 16, 2009 (boomark / email).