The continuously unfolding story of domain name disputes has again turned to Reliance Industries, with the focus on legal actions that were taken by the conglomerate in the past. This comes in the wake of a Delhi techie who bought the domain name ‘JioHotstar’ and asked Reliance to fund his education.
In 2014, a Hyderabad techie and a tech entrepreneur, Amit Bhawani, stated that Reliance threatened him with legal action for having booked the domain names “reliancejio.com” and “riljio.com” in December 2012, which are way before the Jio was launched. Bhawani, who guesses the worth of these domains, got a legal notice stating that he was violating Reliance’s trademark. Although he had demanded Rs 21,00,000 for the domains, he agreed to surrender them without any further resistance owing to Reliance’s legal jurisdiction.
Fast forward to today, and the focus is back on Reliance as another techie has purchased the “JioHotstar” domain before the JioCinema-Disney+ Hotstar tie-up. This person wants Rs 1 crore from Reliance for the domain to finance his education at Cambridge University. His method has raised awareness of cybersquatting and possible ethical issues related to domain name registrations.
The techie has now posted a letter to Reliance executives on his webpage, stating his intention to appeal for a positive response to his request. However, Reliance has turned this down and is planning to sue him for what they deem as an attempt to capitalise on their brand name.
While Reliance aims at the merger with Disney+ Hotstar, the risks are not only for Reliance but for anyone interested in domain registration. This unfolding drama gives a legal lesson of what can happen when individual aspiration gets entangled with well-known corporate brands.
