The Delhi High Court in the case Dabur India Limited v. Ashok Kumar And Ors and other connected matters observed wherein the court is informed by the union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology that repeated non-compliance of judicial orders by any domain name registrars, DNR can be construed as violation of public order and the court can block its website or URL as stated under section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000.
It has been stated under section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 as it grants power to the Central Government for issuing directions to block any information through any computer resource.
The court observed that in its status report filed on March 25 in a bunch of petitions wherein concerning proliferation of fraudulent domain names. Thus, the plea was moved by brand owners and trademark wherein seeking reliefs against misuse of their marks and the names by the unauthorized persons, who registered such marks as part of their domain names.
It has also been submitted by Ministry that though the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, wherein it provides a grievance redressal mechanism by the intermediary, thus, the Act does not provide any specific penalty for infringement or for violation of the provisions or any other matter which pertains to the computer resources being made available by the intermediary.
The bench headed by Justice Prathiba M Singh observed and has noted that the Ministry had followed up with Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, ICANN with regards to the issue of infringement of domain name or for the non-compliance of court orders passed by DNRs.
Therefore, ICANN who being a private and the non-government corporation with the responsibility for IP address space allocation, the domain name system management and for the root server system management functions.
The court also directed in the month of February the MeiTY and Department of Telecommunications in order to take action in accordance with Information Technology Rules, 2021 against DNRs who are not complying with the Rules.
The court stated that the same calls for an action against those DNRs which have not appointed grievance officers or the DNRs have failed to implement orders of courts and authorities in India.
Earlier, it has been asked by the court in the month of September the various DNRs to submit details of their Grievance Officers and the court directed the DOT and MeITY to take action in accordance with law, in case if the officer is not appointed by DNRs.
