In a super-quick typosquatting dispute decision, the Times of Money, the online remittance subsidiary of Indian media conglomerate Times Group, has been directed to transfer its two domain names, remit2home.com and remit2home1.com, to remithome Corporation, a U.S. to Philippines online remittance service based in Oakland, California (www.remithome.com), according to this report.
The decision came from the US National Arbitration Forum, designated to deal with domain name disputes by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). It ruled on its standard three issues (a brief summary of the judgement, which is available here in full, follows):
1. Confusingly similar: The Forum held that remit2home.com and remit2home1.com were confusingly similar to remithome Corporation’s registered REMITHOME mark, and that adding “2” did not render the domain names distinct from the established REMITHOME trademark.
2. Rights or legitimate interests: The Times of Money had argued that (a) it had trademark registrations in India for “remit2India.com” and its variants; (b) that it used “remit2india” as a brand; and (c)that the two domain names in question were natural extension of its branding strategy.
However, the Forum ruled that the Times of Money lacked rights and legitimate interests in the two domain names and “simply used the domains to redirect traffic to a website comprising their actual business name, Times of Money”, which was in direct competition with the complainant’s services.
In fact, the single-member panel completely thrashed the Indian respondent in a decision, which honestly, I found a bit severe in parts, e.g.: Respondent boasted of its own marketing agency, presumably savvy in the Internet marketing arena, with a multi-million dollar budget for advertising for each of the years 2001 to 2007.
3.Use in bad faith: The Forum held that the Times of Money had “actual or constructive knowledge” of remithome Corporation’s rights in the REMITHOME mark prior to registering its own domain names”, and that it “profit from this website, and [was] thus taking commercial advantage of this likelihood of confusion.”
Anyway, its tail between its legs, the Times of Money returns home, with remit2india.com and its other uncontested variants in hand. Although when last checked, the two disputed domain names were still live and still very much redirected to the Indian company’s homepage.
Wow this sounds really out of the world. I think it would be better to hear the other side of the story too ie. Times of Money before passing on the judgement. I am sure that we would hera from the company sooner than later. Readers may find it strage but I have reasons to back remit2india as I have been sending money with them for last five years and trust me these guys know their business and more important is the fact that it is a Times of India group company with 150 odd yrs in business. So if somebody is listening it would be intersting to know the other side of story too.
TimesofMoney Limited obtains stay for domain name transfer of “Remit2Home”
TimesofMoney Limited obtained a stay on the recent ruling for the transfer of its domain names to RemitHome.com. The petition was filed before the Hon’ble district Court in Noida (India) wherein the Court passed an order to register the application of TimesofMoney Limited (under section 34 of the Indian Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996) and issued a stay notice.
The dispute relates to domain names ‘www.remit2home.com’ and ‘www.remit2home1.com’, which are the proprietary domain names owned by TimesofMoney Limited. Currently TimesofMoney Ltd offers money transfer service from United States to Philippines, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Kenya, Poland, Jamaica, Bulgaria and Morocco under the ambit of ‘www.remit2home.com’.
RemitHome.com, an Oakland based remittance service, had contested that the domain names owned by TimesofMoney Limited are deceptively similar to its domain name and were registered and used in bad faith.
In its response challenging the order, TimesofMoney has contested that the disputed domain names are natural extensions and derivatives of TimesofMoney’s successful brand remit2india.com, and were conceptualized and launched when TimesofMoney planned to expand its operations to enable remittances to and from countries other than India.
“In the websites owned and operated by TimesofMoney in the Remittances vertical, the domain name contains ‘Remit2’ as a common feature between two Words as in remit2india, remit2home etc. This makes a brand recognizable and identifiable with the group. The use of ‘Remit2’ is because of a well thought branding and marketing strategy,” said Remit2Home official spokesperson.
TimesofMoney Limited’s portal remit2india.com, covering online money transfer facilities from over 23 countries into India, was launched in February 2001. Remit2India has been adjudged the World’s No.1 Online Money Transfer Service for NRIs.
One of the main grounds invoked was the fact that the US Forum had erred grossly by quoting various case laws in support of its award related to cyber-squatters and applied them to TimesofMoney
About TimesofMoney Limited
TimesofMoney Limited is a subsidiary of the 170-year-old Times Group – India’s largest media conglomerate and publisher of the world’s largest selling daily – The Times of India, and the world’s second largest financial daily – The Economic Times.
TimesofMoney Limited is a pioneer in online remittances and its primary business is to serve people of different ethnic communities across the globe in facilitating money transfers to their home country by offering the convenience of using Internet. Citigroup N.A., the world’s largest banking group, provides the funds transfer processing and network for this service.
Presently, Remit2Home provides online money transfer facilities from US to 8 other countries and in US dollars only and has ambitious plans add more countries. Remit2Home has extensively advertised its services covered by the disputed domain names and invested huge sums in building the brand.
For further information, please contact:
PR Department
TimesofMoney Limited
1st Floor, Times of India Building
Dr. D.N. Road
Mumbai – 01
Tel: 022-22731530