IOC wins battle over domain name indianoil.org

Indian Oil Corporation has won the legal battle over the ownership rights to the Internet domain name, “indianoil.org”. The domain name Indianoil.org was being misused by a US based businessman. Indian Oil Corporation was granted the exclusive right to the domain name by the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Arbitration and Mediation Panel. Nitin Jindal, the owner of search engine GODaddy.com, had claimed that he was entitled to own the website Indianoil.org. WIPO disallowed the claim as it was deceptively similar to Indian Oil Corporation’s ‘INDIAN OIL’ trademark. The ex-parte order was given by WIPO administrative panel sole member Christopher J Pibus, who said that the Indian Oil Corporation has the exclusive right to use the domain name as it is a well-known company and directed Mr. Jindal to transfer the ownership of the website.