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Complainant : ETERNO INFOTECH PVT LTD
Respondent : ZHENG WEI
Disputed domain : Huntnews.in
Decision : The complainant emereged as a decree holder and was awarded compensation of rupees 1 lakh by the respondent.
Case Summary and Analysis
Complainant is a global leader in the area of design and development of computer software. The complainant launched the news aggregation and digital publication software application titled “news hunt”. The complainant is the registered owner of the trademark “news hunt” and claims that his mark has gained international popularity. The complainant has provided multiple submissions where it stated that complainant is a leading player in this field and has other domain names associated with his trademark. Complainant stated that he has a android application by the name of “news hunt” which has received more than 10 million downloads from google play store. The complainant alleges that the disputed domain name is confusingly similar to the registered trademark owned by him. He also alleges that the registration has been done in bad faith with pure intention of selling the domain name since the respondent hasn’t provided any cost on advertisement of the domain name which further also proves that the registrant of the domain name doesn’t have any rights or interest on the disputed domain. The complainant provides that the respondent hasn’t applied for trademark of the disputed domain name since he has no interest to work on this domain. Respondent tries to counter the allegations by stating the words used “hunt” and “news” are generic words, he further states that various news agencies use these words for their businesses, hence his domain (huntnews.in) doesn’t infringe any trademarks. The complainant further provides a list of various disputes where it was held that mere rearranging the words of a popular business doesn’t mean that it avoids confusion within the viewers. He stated that for viewers “hunt news” and “news hunt” are similar to each other. It was then held that the respondent’s domain name is confusingly similar to the complainant’s trademark, and respondent lacks rights and legitimate interest on the disputed domain name, further the registration was done in bad faith hence the domain shall be be transferred to the complainant and respondent is made liable to pay the compensation of rupees 1 lakh to the complainant.
With this dispute we learn that mere re-arranging the words doesn’t exactly proves that the domain is not confusingly similar to the infringed trademark and it does not confuses the viewers. If you wish to read the dispute in detail check it out here.
