Rediff India Wins Cybersquatting Case Against a Pakistani

Rediff.com India Ltd has won a cyber-squatting dispute against a Pakistani national, who was using an identical domain name and illegally incorporating the Indian firm’s trademark, reportedIndian media.

Daniyal Waseem of Quetta in Pakistan was using the domain name ‘rediffpk.com’. To this, the Rediff.com had contended that the disputed Internet site was identical in part and confusingly similar as a whole to the ‘Rediff’ trademark, for which it has rights.

To restrain Danyal for using the trademark, the Rediff.com had approached a Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) earlier this year.

The WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Centre, a part of the United Nations, found that the respondent (Waseem) has no rights with regard to the domain name, and the registered site was being used in bad faith.

We have sent a query for Danyal Waseem to get his viewpoint on this – expect an update on this page when and if we get the response.

Just to mention, whois info for rediffpk.com reveals that domain is still owned by Danyal Waseem.

Update:

We got a response from Mr. Waseem, who is currently in Berlin, he writes:

Our website rediff.com.pk was there just to counter the propaganda attacks ofrediff.com against Pakistan, but they bribed a law firm and PKNIC and illegally transferred rediff.com.pk.

Rediffpk.com was a just a data domain at that time, but after receiving notice from Rediff India, we redirected it as a main domain name, and it is still active so far.

it’s a TLD and they can’t transfer it illegally so easily, but yes they can do that because they are having big money, we are going to fight the decision and will never give up although – I know we don’t have support from anywhere.