Appoint grievance officer in 7 days: Delhi HC to domain name registrars

Observing that trademark and brand owners suffer losses for misuse of their marks by unauthorised websites with similar names, the Delhi High Court has directed domain name registrars to appoint a grievance officer within one week for processing complaints against such websites. 

Domain name registrars (DNRs) are parties that register a website name for any applicant. Justice Pratibha M Singh said if DNRs do not appoint grievance officers within the said time, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) will be free to take action against them for not complying with the local laws.

Several petitions have been filed by companies such as Dabur, Amazon, Godrej saying they have suffered losses due to inadequate verification and privacy protection features by DNRs. As DNRs protect the privacy of these illegal websites, there is not enough information to take an action against them.

The companies have expressed that there is an absence of an effective mechanism to stop websites or parties from using the domain name and trademark of well-known brands. “By doing so, they are earning money off our brand name,” they said.

The petitions by these companies said the use of such domain names have led some people to believe that websites hosted on some “impostor” domain names belong to the actual brand owners.

Counsels for well-known brands said whenever payments for purchase of domain names are accepted, there is frequently a mismatch between the name of the account holder of the bank account in the bank records, and the name given in the billing details at the time of purchase using the same bank account. “There is no verification to check that the name of the account holder is the same as the name entered at the time of purchase,” they said. 

 In the earlier hearing, the court asked MeitY to submit a status report on steps taken to comply with the court's directions. 

During the course of the hearing, as many as 35 DNRs had made submissions as to the appointment of their grievance officers and mechanisms for implementation of court orders.

According to Meghna Mishra, partner at Karanjawala & Co, this detailed order will set a guideline to reduce online fraud. “When there is a clear intention to commit fraud, the DNRs can block such illegal websites but when two parties are fighting over the same trademark the matter has to be resolved in court,” she said. 

 “We have to understand that certain DNRs may not be under the jurisdiction of India so a move to regulate them is welcome,” Mishra added. 

The matter will now be heard on December 1.