Upon arrival at the unauthorized site, customers might not find the goods or services customarily associated with the mark, and might be led to believe that the legitimate owner was misrepresenting its wares.

It submitted that the word "Sify" – which was an amalgam of elements of its corporate name "Satyam Infoway" – was a "fanciful" term, and that it had further garnered substantial goodwill in the market.

It averred that a domain name is merely an address on the computer, which allows communications from the consumers to reach the owner of the business, and confers no comparable property rights in the same.

Therefore, members of the Internet community asked the courts to apply trade mark law as an effective avenue of redress for their disputes.

The High Court responded and held that domain names could be adequately protected under the doctrine of passing off referred to in the Indian law of trade marks.

[3] Satyam Infoway filed suit in the City Civil Court, Bangalore, and requested a temporary injunction against Sifynet Solutions.

It stated that Satyam Infoway was the prior user of the word "Sify", and that it had garnered immense popularity in respect of the sale of internet and computer services sold under the same.

[1] Further, since Satyam Infoway also had that name to use in trade, the High Court believed that it would not cause them considerable hardship to deny the temporary injunction.

[5] Satyam Infoway discharged this burden by demonstrating that the name "Sify" had acquired immense repute in the market in association with their services.

Moreover, it adduced evidence to indicate that it was the first Indian internet company to be listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange in 1999, and that it had expended an enormous amount of money towards the same.

It instead believed that Satyam Infoway had garnered immense goodwill associated with its business, and therefore denying it the use of its domain name would render injustice to it.

The decision has also been criticized because it is believed that the Trade Marks legislation is not equipped to deal with the myriad disputes that arise in the domain name realm.

[6] In 2004, The National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI), a not-for-profit company under Section 25 of Indian Companies Act 1956 promoted by the Department of Information Technology (DIT) in association with the Internet Service providers Association of India (ISPAI), was entrusted with the responsibility of setting up the Registry for .IN country code top level domain name (ccTLD).

INDRP very clearly reads under clause 4 as: "The Registrant is required to submit to a mandatory Arbitration proceeding in the event that a Complainant files a complaint to IN Registry, in compliance with this Policy and Rules thereunder".