Cosim Info starts legal fight to oust cyber squatter

Thursday, 21 February 2008, 21:53 IST
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Chennai: Indian Internet firm Consim Info that owns popular matrimony portal bharatmatrimony.com has started its battle with cyber squatters. Consim Info recently got a restraining order from the Madras High Court, stopping Vinu Mohan of Dubai from running marriage portal bharathmatrimony.net as the name was almost identical with that of the one owned by Consim. The difference between the two portals was the presence of the letter 'h' in bharath and the .net domain of Mohan. A visit to bharathmatrimony.net shows the portal has 10 Indian regional language offshoots. Consim Info runs 15 Indian language portals. "We are in this business since 1999 whereas the squatter has registered his domain only in 2004," Murugavel Janakiraman, founder and CEO of Consim Info, told IANS. When asked why Consim Info did not foresee such threats, he said: "All these years, we were focussed on growing the business and didn't think about the squatters." With bharatmatrimony.com becoming popular and with revenue opportunities from Google Adsense, squatters have started imitating us, he said. Consim Info has now asked its lawyers to do a thorough domain-wise web check for squatters and take remedial action. For the Chennai company, checking for cyber squatters becomes important as the it plans to hit the stock market with an initial public offer sometime next year. Janakiraman declined to comment further on the subject. Early this month, Consim Info got $11.5 million as investment from Mayfield Fund, Yahoo and Canaan Partners. The actual investments by each investor and the stakes they bought in Consim Info were not disclosed. In 2006, the company raised $8.65 million from Yahoo and Canaan Partners.
Source: IANS
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