Rediff versus Radiff
Rediff.com is a portal that offers a variety of services, including e-mail, shopping and messaging, while radiff.com just provides hyperlinks to its advertisers' websites. To know what happened when the former took the latter to court, read on...
REDIFF.COM IS one of the leading websites in India. It was founded in 1996, and is headquartered in Mumbai. It provides e-mail, messaging services, shopping facilities, news, and much more. It has a large number of employees, and boasts of over 50 million online users.
One of the most significant challenges it faced was in 1999, when a website named radiff.com appeared on the scene. People at rediff.com got worried that radiff.com might be trying to cash in on the brand created by Rediff. Firstly, users who have typed in the wrong domain name can land up at Radiff. There was also the possibility that consumers could get confused between the two similar sounding names. Very soon, Rediff filed a suit against Cybertooth, the company behind Radiff.
The defence put up by Cybertooth was primarily based on the following points:
The word 'radiff' is made up by taking the first three letters of the word 'radical', and the first letters of the words 'information', 'future', and 'free'. Its origin has nothing to do with Rediff.
The domain name 'radiff.com' has been registered with NIS, the official agency for registering domain names.
The two websites are engaged in entirely different businesses. Rediff is a portal that offers a variety of services, including e-mail, shopping, and messaging, whereas radiff.com just provides hyperlinks to the websites of its advertisers.
The web user is an aware and sophisticated individual and will not be confused by the alleged similarity in the names.
The court was not convinced by the arguments put forth by Cybertooth, and ruled in favour of Rediff. Cybertooth was given three months to remove the website. Thus, all’s well that ends well!
The defence put up by Cybertooth was primarily based on the following points:
The word 'radiff' is made up by taking the first three letters of the word 'radical', and the first letters of the words 'information', 'future', and 'free'. Its origin has nothing to do with Rediff.
The domain name 'radiff.com' has been registered with NIS, the official agency for registering domain names.
The two websites are engaged in entirely different businesses. Rediff is a portal that offers a variety of services, including e-mail, shopping, and messaging, whereas radiff.com just provides hyperlinks to the websites of its advertisers.
The web user is an aware and sophisticated individual and will not be confused by the alleged similarity in the names.
The court was not convinced by the arguments put forth by Cybertooth, and ruled in favour of Rediff. Cybertooth was given three months to remove the website. Thus, all’s well that ends well!
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