Scholars International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice (SIJLCJ)
Volume-1 | Issue-01 | 17-20
Review Article
Combating Cyber Squatters in the Internet Trade Arena
Krushna Chandra Dalai & Alaka Mishra
Published : March 30, 2018
Abstract
With the march of civilization, "living law" has been in continuous search for answers to the upcoming challenges. In the digital age, we are a witness to yet another technological unfurling-the technology of the Internet. The Web is a territory where caveat emptor is the rule and, as a result, consumers increasingly rely upon strong brand awareness and brand and brand performance for the confidence to engage in e-commerce. While trademarks are of greater importance in this virtual environment, they are also more vulnerable to infringement, dilution and anti-competitive practices. Trademark owners expend vast resources, engaging automated "web crawling" software and cyber surveillance firms, to monitor the billions of web pages and protect their intellectual property rights. Identity on the Internet also goes beyond the trademark system, because of the role played by the internet domain name system, which facilitates users' ability to navigate on the network. Domain names are user friendly addresses that correspond to the unique Internet Protocol numbers that connect our computers to the Internet and enable the network routing system to direct data requests to the correct addressee. Domain names were originally intended to perform a purely technical function in a user friendly way, but because they intuitive and easy to remember they now perform a function as business or personal identifiers. Most businesses, whether e-commercial or not, advertise their domain name to signal a Web presence. In this way, although, as such, not a form of intellectual property, domain names now perform an identifying functions similar to that of a trademark. Because of the way in which people and search engines operate, most businesses use their trademark or trade name as their domain name and this has caused conflict with the advent of predatory practices, known as 'cyber squatting. In this paper best effort made to limelight the trade mark issues in the cyber space and reforms yet to be in inquest.