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Spielberg threatens legal action against Kerala firm

By K. Srinivas Reddy

HYDERABAD Aug. 24. Cybersquatting controversies which were hitherto confined to Western countries have now entered India, with the Hollywood movie director, Steven Spielberg, threatening to initiate legal action against a software company in Kerala over the domain name of the company's website.

Mr. Spielberg took objection to the registration of a website URL dreamworkzweb.com by a software company with its headquarters in Thrissur, Kerala.

The Hollywood director took objection to the domain name since it resembles his production company — DreamWorks.

According to mi2g, a technology website, Mr. Spielberg threatened legal action against Dreamworkz Web Solutions if it did not hand over the domain name to his company within a fortnight.

The company whose registered address is Pathan Buildings, Thrissur has not responded to email seeking clarifications from this correspondent.

The outcome of the dispute over the domain name would largely depend on whether Mr. Spielberg had registered the company's name and to what extent Indian cyber laws cover the domain names being registered by Indian companies. Dreamworkz had registered the name on July 12.

The domain name dispute has attracted attention of surfers since it was only this week British popstar, Robbie Williams, won a similar cybersquatting case.

www.robbiewilliams.info, a URL registered by a prankster pointed to the site of Oasis, a rock group of the United Kingdom.

When Robbie Williams complained to the U.N. World Intellectual Property Organisation, it had ordered the web administrator to hand over the site to the pop singer.

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