The Contradiction between Intellectual Property Rights and the Internet: Laws involved

Abstract

The invention of internet brought out a whole new scope for law: that being, Cyber law. Other international laws have been enacted to tackle the issues that arise in the virtual world. The purpose of this article is to portray the laws regarding domain dispute cases in India and similar laws on the international board. In the current world, there are about 3.79 billion web users and more than 330.6 million domain names registered. Each time a domain is registered, a problem of having two highly similar sounding or even similar words arises. In such a situation, there will be conflicts over domain names or other such IPR disputes on the internet. Therefore, the ICANN was founded. ICANN - the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, checks and keeps control of these differences arising in the spectrum of domain name and other internet related cases. The spectrum includes not just trademark infringement cases but, also patent and copyright infringement cases too. In India, for domain disputes, bringing an arbitration proceeding under ICANN’s rules, or bringing a lawsuit in a court of law is a viable option as per Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy. Cybersquatting, inter alia, is a an issue arising out of trademark infringement as such is a major issue for any mega corporate or, basically, a corporate that is popular in the society.