Asian News International, better known as ANI is a common name in Indian journalism. The news agency boasts of a 50 year of experience in serving the Indian audience. However, the company had been facing a very serious issue related to their domain names.
ANI owns the ANI trademark as well as two domain names: aniin.com and aninews.in. However, the agency found that someone else was using their trademarks and a similar online platform had also been set up with a domain name that was confusingly similar to theirs. The impostor platform was operating on the domain name aninewsindia.com. They were also violating the ANI trademark by using their logo with the term ‘News India’ added below the exact copy of ‘ANI’ logo. ANI media thus went for judicial relief.
The Delhi High Court has granted an injunction in favor of ANI media. The court noticed that the domain name aninewsindia.com had been registered in bad faith. The court accepted ANI Media as the original owner of ANI trademark. The court asked the registrars to block the counterfeit domain name. Interestingly Google was also a party to this case allegedly for showing the fake domain name in their search results.
ANI is a household name in India. It has been the first to start Broadcast Syndication in India. Broadcast Syndication is a process in which an agency distributes broadcastable content such as news shows and programs to the television channels without going through the broadcast network.
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