Nesters In Cyberia

William Shakespeare, in his innocence, had once asked "what’s in a name?" The Elizabethan bard has to be told that name.com, naam.com and-of course-rose.com are registered domains today. And that, more often than not, these names are worth a fortune.

The great world wide web is all about names. Literally. That’s why individuals register catchy phrases/ names on the cyberspace and put a price tag on it. Often, in ‘meatspace’ the name may belong to someone else. Like, birla.com isn’t the website of the Birlas. It belongs to a Calcutta-based company, Computer Wizards. Abhishek from the Wizards is allergic to queries on the price tag he has put on his site. Similarly, indiatoday.com isn’t the web address of the popular magazine. A gentleman in the US is sitting on it. A visitor to these sites is often greeted with the ‘under construction’ sign post.

In India, the general opinion is that one can get away with trademark violations. But recently the Delhi High Court issued injunctions against Cyber World Infotech, a Nasik-based company that registered bisleri.com. Aqua Minerals, which owns the Bisleri brand, is now armed with a favourable judgement as the case proceeds painfully to the next round. Pramod Borse of Cyber World says: "In the north when they want to ask you if you have brushed your teeth, they ask colgate kiya kya?" Similarly, he thought, Bisleri was generic.

He says that when Aqua Minerals got in touch with him, he was ready to give up his claim. "All I wanted was Rs 25,000 which I had spent on developing the site. But they sent a legal notice. So, now I will fight it out." A senior official in Borse’s office points out something interesting, though unconvincing: "Bisleri is the surname of an Italian gentleman who is associated with us."

Borse is caught in the web but many others know how to escape it. Mahendra Gandhi has been involved with computers since the days "you needed Pentagon’s permission to import a laser printer". In 1996, his nephew introduced him to a concept called www. What Gandhi did after that was to register the word ‘yellowpages’ as a suffix to 97 countries. So, englandyellowpages.com or srilankayellowpages.com or singaporeyellowpages.com belong to him. If one goes to englandyellowpages.com, the home page will say that it’s the most comprehensive directory on the Net. It will also add that the site is under construction. It’s not been bought yet. To buy a domain name from Gandhi, one has to pay him $5,000. "We are web developers," he continues, "so the buyer has to pay us 10 to 15 per cent of his profits." Since the Net has not begun to make profits yet, Gandhi earns chiefly from selling the names. He has sold 18 of his domain names until now to parties from respective countries. In Singapore, however, he is facing a suit because there the buyers are not convinced that singaporeyellowpages was a generic term. But Gandhi isn’t unduly bothered. "I am waiting for venture capitalists to come and give me some money. In the business of directory information, you need to have a name like canadayellow pages or indiayellowpages. More people have heard of the words ‘yellow pages’ than something like rediff."

Interestingly, rediff.com has had to share its popularity with strangers. Myrediff.com, radiff. com and rediffchat.com. do not belong to the company. Its punchline ‘India’s favorite website’ has also been taken. A Bangalore-based businessman who owns IndiasFavouriteWebSite.com had demanded Rs 3.5 lakh. But rediff chose not to pay. Instead, it registered a relatively clumsy, India FavouriteWebsite.com.

Rajiv Warrier of rediff.com explains: "In most cases, the courts have passed favourable verdicts. So I don’t think we will have to get into monetary settlements. But I don’t know if our laws in this regard are in place. To begin with, we don’t seem to have a good mechanism to fight regular trademark infringements."

Ramesh Nahata who owns radiff.com also owns bseonline.net. "I will sell them for nothing less than Rs 50 lakh each," he says.

While many squatters believe that it’s early days yet for them to make money, there are others in the pack who don’t want to haggle. Rakesh Sud, who owns sharekhaan. com and shareskhaan.com says, "It’s to point out to these guys who spend so much money on the Net that they should be careful while registering."

Sud owns some 200 names. Express Computers had estimated that his names were worth crores. He thinks that in a year unique domain names will fetch smart prices: "This investment is better than shares."

In the midst of all this, one man points out that if you have elementary hacking knowledge, you can boot a squatter out and steal the name. It’s not a nice thing to do. But then, neither is squatting.