On Sept. 4, plaintiff India-based travel service provider MakeMyTrip (India) Pvt. Ltd. brought suit in the Western District against India industrial conglomerate Tata Sons Ltd. seeking a determination that its registration of oktatabyebye.com does not violate the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act. The complaint asks the court to set aside the World Intellectual Property Organization’s arbitration panel decision finding the registration violated the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy and ordering that the domain name be transferred to Tata Sons.
MakeMyTrip brought suit in Western District because its registrar, defendant eNom, Inc., is located in Bellevue. On Sept. 11, however, MakeMyTrip voluntarily dismissed its claim against eNom.
MakeMyTrip asserts it has legitimate rights in its domain name because the phrase, “Ok, tata, bye bye,” is an informal way in India to say goodbye. It alleges it did not register the domain name in bad faith for the same reason and that the domain name is not confusingly similar to Tata Sons’ TATA trademark.
Tata Sons convinced WIPO’s one-member panel that the the opposite is true. It has not yet answered MakeMyTrip’s complaint.
The case cite is MakeMyTrip (India) Pvt. Ltd. v. Tata Sons Ltd., No. 09-1261 (W.D. Wash.).