Arun Jaitley might not be as hot a celebrity like Yuvi or Ash, but the BJP minister still has 61 pages of information about him on Google (only 61?). That apparently makes his name a ‘commodity’ hot enough on the domain name market and the legal counsel of Mr. Arun Jaitley has now moved the Delhi High Court requesting an intervention in an ongoing domain sale of www.arunjaitley.com that is currently on by an American domain auctioning company.
Here is the story so far: Network Solutions, a USA based web hosting company had owned the domain name www.arunjaitley.com. Learning this, Mr. Jaitley had apparently approached the website for the ownership of the domain when he was told that the domain name was ‘pending deletion’. But soon after, the domain name was put back on sale at a price of $14,445. And on August 27,2009, the domain name was transferred to M/S Portfolio Brains, a domain name auctions website.
According to Mr.Jaitley’s counsel, the domain name clearly belongs to him and the 61 pages of Google that contains information about him is an indication of this very thing. Mr. Jaitley’s counsel also claims that the company had prevented him from registering the website and were ‘unlawfully’ holding the domain name.
This looks like a weak case in my opinion. For one, our birth names are not trademarked. It is not clear if Portfolio Brains had prevented Mr. Jaitley from taking ownership even if he was ready to pay the $14K money, which is unlikely. Though, this is a case of unethical cybersquatting, it is nowhere illegal. Nothing prevents me from owning a www.laluprasad.com or www.jayalalitha.com with the idea of selling it to the rightful owner at an exorbitant price when approached. It is the prerogative of the people who think the name belongs to them (Arun Jaitley in this case) to have registered the domain in the first place when it was still available.
What do you think? Is Mr.Arun Jaitley’s case strong enough and will he be able to claim ownership? By the bye, Mr.Devarajan better beware. He is the owner of www.arunjaitley.in! 
He should have tried the “.IN” domain before jumping over to Delhi HC and suing Network Solutions. That way he’d have got his domain name at perhaps below a 1000 bucks, and it would have sounded a bit patriotic too. Now with Mr. Jaitley making a storm out of the issue, perhaps even other domains are bound to face the same fate.
Re: Nothing prevents me from owning a http://www.laluprasad.com or http://www.jayalalitha.com with the idea of selling it to the rightful owner at an exorbitant price when approached.
This might: In the U.S., the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act makes people who register domain names that are individuals names (with the sole intent of selling the rights of the domain name to the individual for a profit) liable to civil action. Statutory damages may be awarded up to $100,000 per infraction.
I read this piece of news on timesofindia.com and couldn’t even understand that what exactly was the issue ? Then after googling i hit this post and everything became so clear. Just to stop someone from using his-name.com domain, they are creating all the non-sense.
Bullshit !
Thanks for the info about the anticybersquatting act, Danny. Wonder if we have a similar one in India, though.
Now, can’t help thinking why Airtel.com still redirects to Vodafone’s website!
“Though, this is a case of unethical cybersquatting, it is nowhere illegal.”
Of course it is, Arun Jaitely has every right to own the domain name at regular price instead of an exorbitant amount by some little unethical greedy auctioneer. Read the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticybersquatting_Consumer_Protection_Act
I’m unsure if that is applicable to Indians, Manisha. An article on Business Standard seems to make a similar claim (read the clarifications part): http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/cyber-squatting-returnsa-bang/368858/
And that is why, like I mentioned in my comment earlier, I wonder why Bharti Airtel has not claimed the Airtel.com domain name from Vodafone so far.