Fotios Tsiouklas and Alan Gokoglu, two Australian friends, expected that the app TikTok would become a big brand, so they purchased tiktoks.com for $2,000 shortly after TikTok’s introduction. TikTok’s parent firm, Bytedance, offered Tsiouklas and Gokoglu $145,000 to purchase that domain. However, the couple opted to keep the domain and launch a “follower growth” business, offering a “follow-for-follow” service. They also charge a fee to assist users in increasing their follower base.
Bytedance lodged a cybersquatting complaint against TikToks.com in August 2020, following a failed negotiating attempt for the tiktoks.com domain. According to the WIPO administrative panel judgement report, the firm submitted an updated complaint in September 2020 to cover the following domains:
- Growtiktok.com,
- Tktokcharts.com
- Tiktokexposure.com, and
- Tiktokplant.com.
As of Jan. 13, 2021, the panel ordered the pair of friends to transfer all five domains in question to the complainant.
Did the friends do anything wrong? To know it better let us understand CYBERSQUATTING.
The term “squatting” refers to the act of inhabiting an uninhabited or abandoned area or building that the squatter does not own, rent, or have authorization to use. Cybersquatting, on the other hand, is distinguished by the fact that the domain names being “squatted” are (sometimes but not usually) paid for during the registration process. Cyber squatters typically demand far more prices than they paid for the domain. In attempt to encourage the subject to purchase the domain from them, some cyber squatters make insulting statements about the people or business the name is designed to serve. Others finance their squatting by adding sponsored connections to the genuine site that the user most likely want via ad networks.
There are several realistic types of cybersquatting that draw notice, all of which fall under the umbrella term of cybersquatting. These varieties include typosquatting, traditional cybersquatting, cyberpiracy, and faux cybersquatting. “Classical cybersquatting” is the straightforward registration of a domain name based on a brand with the goal of profitably selling it to the actual owner of the property. The use of trademarks in domain names to increase traffic to a collection of similar web pages recognized by a common name is referred to as “cyber piracy.” While “pseudo cybersquatting” is defined as registering a domain name but not utilizing it or linking it to any online web pages or live website. These are often referred to as “blocking registrations,” and their purpose is to prevent legitimate right holders from utilizing domain names. All of the aforementioned behaviors are classed as various sorts of “cybersquatting.”
Yahoo Inc. v. Akash Arora was the first cybersquatting lawsuit in India. In this case, Yahoo Inc., located in the United States, filed an injunction complaint against the defendant Akash Arora, who had registered a deceptively similar trademark to Yahoo Inc. as “Yahoo.com.” The High Court of Delhi issued an injunction in favour of the plaintiff, preventing the defendant from using “Yahoo!” because it infringed on Yahoo Inc.’s trademark. Because the defendant’s domain name was deceptively similar, customers were easily deceived, despite the defendant’s disclaimer or the addition of the term “India” in its domain name.
Cybersquatting has grown so prevalent in today’s world that it has been dubbed a modern-day extortion strategy, making it a critical concern in the judicial system. The United States passed the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act in 1999 to attempt to resolve conflicts in this area; however, there is no comparable legislation in India that specifically addresses cyber-squatting. All cyber-squatting proceedings in India are decided under trademark law, which is certain to be unproductive.
The emphasis should not be on investigating every problem from a trademark standpoint since litigation is not always preferred because it results in tremendous time and financial losses. As a result, there is an urgent need in India for new law that particularly addresses cyber-squatting.
Amul is one of India’s major dairy companies, with a revenue turnover of more than 38,550 crore Indian rupees (roughly US$5.28 billion, or 385,500,000,000 Indian Rupees) in fiscal year 2019-2020. The following domains were acquired and used to establish phishing sites for the firm, making it a target of cybersquatting:
- Amuldistributor.com
- Amulboard.com
- Amufran.org.in
- Amuldistributorindia.com
As part of their ruse, the fraudsters created fictitious bank accounts in Amul’s name and sent false paperwork through email.
They demanded a charge to become an Amul distributor or franchisee. On the website, they staged recruiting scams in which candidates were required to pay a fee to apply for employment.
A fraud was carried out between 2018 and 2020. Finally, Amul issued a public warning about the scams and went to court to resolve the situation.
10 Interesting Cybersquatting Examples to Learn From
