Tata Sons wins case against Oktatabyebye.com

This is a little weird. I have tremendous respect for the Tata group but this case against the travel community site oktatabyebye.com doesn’t make sense or logic unless they want to manage the community too.

Interesting thing to note is that MakeMyTrip which owns the domain is talking to the community and building up quite a support, however I don’t come across anything similar by the Tata folks.

As they say:

Very recently, TATA Sons filed a case against us (oktatabyebye.com) in infringement of their TATA name (as our domain name contains the ‘TATA’ word!). Tata Sons has contended that it is confusingly similar to its ‘Tata’ brand and the travel portal runner has no rights or legitimate interests to use it. The company had argued that the site infringed the right of its registered trademark/service mark ‘Tata’.

And in a decision by a sole panelist, ownership of the domain OkTataByeBye.com has been awarded to TATA by WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) Arbitration and Mediation Centre.

Needless to say we’re alarmed by such claims on our domain name. The Oktatabyebye.com domain name is importantly a representative of the colloquial “OK Ta Ta Bye Bye”, which represents travel, journey and related activities, referring to the generic word “Ta Ta”.

Nikhil Pahwa blogs at Medianama

MakeMyTrip (which owned the oktatabyebye domain) is going to appeal against the order, CEO Deep Kalra has told MediaNama, adding that ”Ta ta is a generic that everyone understands.” Strangely enough, there is no appeals process at WIPO, so MakeMyTrip will file an appeal in India to stay the transfer of the domain name.

What is that they say about people who live in glass houses? Via Twitter, Cleartrip informs us that MakeMyTrip owns Cleartrip.net.in. Unlike Ta ta, I don’t think Cleartrip is a generic, is it?