Arbitral Tribunal restrains former member of AIADMK from using domain name with party’s name

Tribunal orders transfer of domain name www.aiadmk.org.in to AIADMK, party's former member restrained from using same/similar name. NIXI to take necessary actions. Tribunal finds AIADMK abbreviation belongs to political party, bad faith exists in use of domain name.

An arbitral tribunal, constituted at the instance of the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI), has concluded that the political party, All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam is popularly known by its abbreviation AIADMK, and hence the party’s former member K.C. Palanisamy cannot continue to use the domain name www.aiadmk.org.in

The tribunal, headed by sole arbitrator Pankaj Garg ordered the transfer of the domain name in favour of the party and restrained the former member from using the same name or any other deceptively similar name. It directed NIXI to take incidental or anciliary actions required for the transfer of the domain name.

The tribunal also imposed costs of ₹50,000 to be paid by the former member to AIADMK, represented by its leader C.Ve. Shanmugam who had been authorised by party general secretary Edappadi K. Palaniswami to lodge a complaint before NIXI since the party’s authorised website was only www.aiadmk.com.

The complainant’s counsel K. Gowtham Kumar and Balaji Srinivasan argued before the tribunal that the use of a deceptively similar username with the extension org.in by the former member had caused great confusion in the minds of people because only that domain name crops up during a search through most search engines.

They wanted NIXI to resolve the issue in terms of the .IN Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (INDRP) and hence, the exchange had constituted an arbitral tribunal with the consent of both parties. The tribunal conducted a detailed inquiry and arrived at the conclusion that the abbreviation AIADMK refers only to the political party.

“The disputed domain name bears the abbreviation AIADMK, which belongs to the complainant party... After considering all the facts and circumstances and the evidence, this tribunal is of the view that an element of bad faith exists and particular domain name is being used in bad faith by the respondent,” it concluded.