The Delhi High Court has asked the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and Department of Telecommunications to act against Domain Name Registrars who are not abiding by IT Rules 2021, notified by the Government last year in October.
The single-judge bench of Justice Prathiba M Singh was of the view that stringent steps would be required to be taken, in order to curb the menace of illegal domain name registrations having well-known marks and names of business houses.
"It is accordingly directed that MEITY/DoT/the appropriate authority shall take steps action in accordance with the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 against DNRs who do not agree to comply with the said Rules or do not appoint grievance officers or implement orders of Indian Courts/Authorities."
The Court was dealing with set of suits filed by a large number of trademark and brand owners, seeking reliefs against misuse of their marks / names / brands by unauthorized persons, who register such marks as part of their domain names.
The primary issue raised was that the proliferation of these fraudulent and illegal domain names which the plaintiffs have alleged that resulted in enormous damage to innocent and gullible members of the public, who have mistakenly paid large sums of money to the said website owners/domain name owners.
The Counsel for the Plaintiffs apprised the Bench in some of the matters, a number of DNRs have completely refused to comply with the blocking orders and other directions issued by the Court, in respect of infringing domain names.
In view of other information placed before the Court such as MEITY’s status report, e-mails by Namecheap Inc, the Court was of the view that stringent steps would be required to be taken, in order to curb the menace of illegal domain name registrations having well known marks and names of business houses.
The Court also directed that the concerned MEITY/DOT officials shall peruse the various orders which are passed in these proceedings prior to taking any action under the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. Steps in respect thereof, in terms of Rules be taken within four weeks.
The Court has asked the Ministry to file the status-report by next hearing as well.
Mismatch between Account Holder Name and Name in Billing Details
Additionally, the issue of mismatch between the name of the account holder of the bank account, and the name given in the billing details in many cases under consideration has also been mentioned.
It was submitted that whenever payments are made into a bank account, the name of the account holder and the name of the recipient are not matched and it is only the account number which is matched, is leading to innocent consumers being duped.
The stand of the RBI is that various guidelines in respect of RTGS and NEFT transactions have already been issued and guidelines are regularly issued from time to time in respect of mandatory compliances that are to be affected by banks at the time of opening of accounts etc.
RBI's Counsel submitted that without conducting KYC verification, it is not permissible for a bank to open an account, however, as far as confirming the name of the beneficiary’s account and not merely the account number is concerned, the said functionality is available with banks and it is for them to enable the same if they choose to do so via NPCI.
The Court took note of the fact that entire difficulty has arisen because of the fact that the banks only seek to match the account number while accepting payments through online, electronic and offline modes and do not verify the name of the beneficiary and match the same with the account holder’s name and directed RBI to intervene.
"RBI needs to take steps in order to curb malpractices as has been seen in all these suits where amounts have been accepted by banks in the names of well-known companies but the bank account stands at the name of some third party."
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(With input from news agency language)
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