Cybersquatting
What is Cybersquatting?
Cybersquatting is a crime in the digital world in which a person imitates the domain name of a specific trademark and tries to make a profit. Even though all types of cybersquatting are considered illegal, there are cases where the person is sparred by considering their intent. If they are not up to making money, their cases can be an exception to cybersquatting.
The trademark owners who move for legal action against the squatters have to show the following:-
- Prove their trademark or name is well-known and has been harmed because of cybersquatting.
- The squatter has intentionally infringed the rights of the already existing companies by using their domain name.
- The domain name of the website is identical to the existing trademark.
In the first case of cybersquatting in India( Yahoo Inc. v. Akash Arora), the latter had created the website Yahoo.com and tried to defend his actions as he had added “India” and used disclaimers. In turn, this confused the users and ruled in favour of the former, and the latter was banned from using Yahoo.
The same happened for the Indian brand Amul during 2018-20, whose websites were replicated into different URLs with the same domain names and imitated their actions.