Legal Notice received from RPS Group regarding website

[webmaster]

I received a legal notice today from MARS & Partners, International Legal Consultants, Advocate & IPR Attorneys on behalf of RPS Group for the website www. rps-savana. co.in.

The notice says

Date 24th May 2010

Through Registered Post
Return Receipt Requested

Mr. Jayanta Barua,
X-XX, XX Floor,
XXXXXX, XXXX
New Delhi -XX
Mobile: XXXXXXXXX
Email: rpssavana @yahoo.com and info @rps-savana.co.in

Subject: Legal Notice demanding transfer of domain name (www. rps-savana. co.in)and also to Cease and Desist from the non permitted use of copyrighted materials and Trade Mark(s) owned by our client on website www. rps-savana. co.in

Dear Mr. Barua,

Under instructions from and for and on behalf of our client, M/s RPS Infrastructure Limited having its registered office at A-193, 1st Floor, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase-I, New De!h:-100020 to serve you with the following legal notice, which we hereby do

1. Our client is a renowned builder and developer of housing projects including group housing colonies, presently developing number of projects including but not limited to the RPS Savana, RPS Palms, RPS Rhythm and others;

2. Our client is running its official website on the domain www. rps-savana. com which allows its existing as well as prospective" customers to get details about their project and other relevant information about the RPS group;

3. That you, the Noticee have no association with RPS SAVANA project nor have you ever taken / booked any flat from our client, although you have interacted with our client in respect of unit No. xxxx on behalf of Ms. xxxx xxxx D/o Sh.xxxx who is a sole applicant in our client's said project;

4. On 25th February 2009, you got one domain www. rps-savana.co in (i.e. infringing domain) registered in your name which is deceptively similar to our client's registered trade mark(s) and further similar to our client's official website www. rps-savana. com;

5. You are using the said infringing domain www. rps-savana. co.in as a World Wide Web domain in violation of the applicable provisions of the Indian Trade Marks Act, 1999, Copyright Act, 1956 and other intellect.ual properties of the Company;

6. Although you have referred to the said infringing dumain as a discussion platform / forum for the flat owners of SAVANA project, but you have deliberately used on the said website number of registered / unregistered copyrighted work and Trade Marks material of our client including but not limited to the following

a. non permitted usage / partial usage of their registered Trade Mark as well as copyrighted mark "RPS group";

b. non permitted partial usage of the "Savana" Logo which is registered in their name;

c. non permitted usage of their copyrighted material such as price list, specifications, payment plan, terms and conditions, master plan and tower wise layout etc.;

d. non permitted usage of their copyrighted photographs such as sample flat pictures and images of their official "SAVANA" brochure;

e. non permitted usage of trade names of RPS Group Projects like Savana, Rhythm and Palms which are the sole property of the RPS Group;

7. Not only this, said web pages further contain advertisement of number of third party non related products and services including the advertisement of other builders / competitor's projects.

8. Please note that the web pages hosted on your infringed domain not only contains the unauthorized use of the logo(s) / Trade Marks, project names, information about project, photographs and other copyrighted material of our client but the overall appearance of the said web pages is such which causes confusion amongst our client's existing and prospective clients and general public about the actual official web site of the company who wish to have authenticated information through internet regarding their present and forthcoming projects and thereby affects their reputation and business.

Thus, on basis of the aforesaid and with specific regard to the captioned matter, we through this notice call upon you to do the following acts with immediate effects

1. To transfer any and all registration rights in respect of the said domain (www. rps-savana. co.in) in favor of RPS Infrastructure Limited within 7 days of receipt of this letter;

2. To cease and desist from further using any copyrighted material or registered / unregistered Trade Mark of our Client on the said infringed domain or any other media, including electronic or otherwise;

3. To declare in writing that you have confirmed as required above by signing the enclosed written undertaking.

Our Clients prefers to resolve this matter amicably, but in case of any failure on your part in complying as required above, it shall take appropriate legal action in this regard necessary to protect its commercial/legal rights and business.

This notice is being sent without prejudice to our Client's legal rights and claims, all of which are expressly reserved.

A copy of this notice is retained for our record and reference.
Date: 24th May 2010
Place: New Delhi

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Undertaking

I, Mr. Jayanta Barua, s/o______________ r/o x-xx, xxxxxxx, xxxxxxx, xxxxx-xx, New Delhi -xx, do hereby agree to abide by the terms as outlined in this notice dated 24th May 2010 with respect to all intellectual property rights of RPS Infrastructure Limited, including but not limited to the Trade Marks and Copyrighted material as described above and particulal'ly relating to the RPS SAVANA project. I further agree to transfer the all ownership rights over the infringing domain, i.e. www. rps-savana. co.in to RPS Infrastructure Limited, over which I neither have nor had any lawful claim within 7 days from the receipt of notice. I further undertake that i would not associate myself, directly or indirectly, in any activity that infringes or may infringe any Trade Mark(s), Copyright(s) or other intellectual property of the RPS Infrastructure Limited or damages their reputation otherwise.

Jayanta Barua

Date:
Place:

I could not stop myself from laughing out loud at their desperate and cheap tactics. And I am also beginning to get pissed at their attitude. I think its time now to show RPS Group our strength in unity.

[s1joshi]

"To transfer any and all registration rights in respect of the said domain (www. rps-savana. co.in) in favor of RPS Infrastructure Limited"..................

This was bound to happen, Despite taking all money, They have no time to reply to any of our concerns but have full time legal department in action attempting to restrict our channel of communication

On a lighter note I suppose the RPS Savana official website also came up sometime in 2008 end or 2009, why not we sue them for using the same domain name ;-)

[webmaster]

They are trying to gag us all, and we need to decide a course of action very soon.

[hellofriends]

Hi..
I am not a technical expert..but here are few suggestions :

1. Create a Yahoo group for now so that we can be in touch even if we are not able to communicate thru this forum.

2. Register a new domain name (like SAVANAFBD) which i think shud not be a costly affair and shift all the stuff there... though not sure how much effort,resources wud that require.

because looking at the notice i don't think we shud get into this tussle while our main aim is to get max out of RPS for our housing project..

Please suggest


Regards
Nitin

[ssinha18]

Hi,
I agree with Nitin. Let us not get involved in trademark related issues. we should create another domain and continue our association there to achieve our goal.
Thanks,
.. Sinha

[dheerajjain]

Hello Jayanta,

I extend my full co-operation and assistance to you in this regard. Builder is trying to gag you and all members of forum. I will be contacting you personally to see what we can do.

Regards
Dheeraj

[Sudhanshu]

Hi Jayant,
This is certainly RPS desperate attempt to close this site.
Any way i am also of the opinion that we should not waste our energy and time in this unnecessary fuss. We can achieve our objective with a differenet site name.
We can port things on a new platform. I would be happy to help for any future work in this regard. Just let us know How can we help you now.

[ajay2023]

Their action shows that they had hit badly & recognised our forum. Let's decide future course of action & i am ready to contribute financially. We must fight out our case, They just can not take us granted.

Rgds
Ajay

[webmaster]

Here are my thoughts:

RPS Group has started to feel this website is a potential threat to their business. WHY?? Are we doing something wrong or they are doing something wrong? They are trying to single me out stating I am not associated with RPS Group in any way since the apartment is booked in my wife’s name. It should not concern RPS Group who is managing which website, rather they should focus more on finishing their projects than wasting end-users money on legal proceedings.
This step by RPS Group has shown us that we should be wary of them when we deal with them in the future. If they can resort to such desperate measures to stop people from discussing their projects, then we have a lot to be worried about in the future. This indicates they are very insecure as a company and reputation, and can stoop down to any level to sustain themselves. It is very surprising and hilarious that they even thought of hiring a law firm to bring down the website and forum, they must have lot of spare time on their hands.
As regards to handing the website over to RPS Group, it is simply impossible and absurd. Their demand purely violates our fundamental right of freedom of speech and expression. Why should they have a problem with us using the Savana logo when this is a community website for their project, and thousands of other websites are already using their logos and pictures. If they do not want us to use their logos, fine…we will change them, infact we have already changed them and make them better than the original. Rather they should have been happy that we are using their logo to promote their group.

RPS Group has started this affiliation on a bad note by firing off the wrong salvo. Now if we back down and give in to their demands, it will be a very tragic and shameful loss for us as a community. Even before we had a chance to meet all the members, and when this forum was slowly starting to take the shape of a platform and association, they have asked us to hand it over to them stating we are violating their Intellectual Property Rights. This is completely outrageous and disgraceful. It is not the matter of handing over the domain to RPS, it is the matter of our right and self-esteem. Today they have asked us to hand over the domain to them, tomorrow if we come up with a different website, they will question why are we discussing about their project and try to stop us again, next day they might try some ridiculous and cheap tactic again.

Now is the time when we have to show them our strength in unity and that they cannot take us for granted. What I am suggesting, all of us, and I mean all the members (200+) on this forum should gather at the RPS Group office in Okhla and grill them until they take this notice back and also answer our other questions on the project. Please understand that this is not my individual fight neither am I am trying to instigate a battle with RPS. If you think that it would be more simply to hand over the website rather than get into this trouble, than we have already lost the battle with RPS. If you decide to sit back and wait and watch for the action to happen, then our project is already doomed. I take no personal pleasure in spending 10 hours daily maintaining the website, spending my weekend fixing bugs and errors on the website instead of giving time to my family, racking my brains everyday thinking of new features to implement for benefit all members, spending money out of my own pocket to sustain the website. If this forum would not have existed, we would have wandered around thousands of sites looking and longing for a small bit of information on the project, scanning through thousands of pages looking any information related to Savana. I am sure many people from different residential communities wished they had a dedicated forum like Savana. If we give up the forum, we would give up a part of ourselves.

We would all need to take a little time out of our busy schedule for this cause and fight for our right. If you decide to stay in the background and wait for others to come forward, it’ll be too late. I will be more than happy to let go of the site and relieve my stress. We have all heard and seen companies and builders trying to bully and pressurize customers and intimidate them, it is now happening to us and we need to act fast. Our honeymoon period is over and we have to face reality now.

[JSDHouse]

Jayanta is absolutly right. I am ready to go to RPS Okhla office.
We all are going to live as a family in future and we should not be threatened by RPS anymore. They can take further action in future too.

And I am now not much sure about quality of work we expect form them.

Let us decide the date and time for the meeting.
I would request all to be a part of this meeting.

Cheers
Deepak

[mbhattacharya]

Hello Everybody,

I am agreeing also with Jayanta that the website is a wonderful and efficient way for all of Savana members to communicate&discuss about our future home.No way it should cause any problems for RPS that they neded to serve this show cause notice instead of may be sending an email first(which anyways they never do) to Jayanta asking fo rsoem clarifications if required.

So this domain name may be similra but still diffrent than theirs and as now Jayanta has removed the offcial logo so should'nt be any cause of concern to them.This whole legal notice thing is to scare us and bully us so that we don't ask un-comfortable questions which they are not keen to answer.

Jayanta:I will not be able to join personally but let me know if you guys decide to take some legal course of actions as i am ready to participate monetarily.

Lets not be chickens and give up to this idiot/arrogant builder sof our's..after all we are a strong group of 200+ people and should be able to unite against someone for our own good.

Thanks jayanta once again for all your efforts till date and also for the future

Jai Hind

Madhusudhan Bhattacharya

[s1joshi]

Hi Jayanta

I would be joining you .. and its high time we do a mass demonstration in there office to show that we are serious about our money..

I have send them several email concerns over last few weeks.. they didnt had courtesy to even send acknowledgment of them , leave aside addressing a single issue.

Lets decide on a date, All of us who are in NCR need to be present in person and all those outside and cant join, They need to send some representative. We need all of us.

[anuj_bansal]

RPS group would have lost many customers who would have gone through this site. So they want to continue to fool people and sell them flats in Savana and other projects.

As far as I know IPR is in there favor and that is why the legal notice has been sent. Though we can protest against RPS, I dont think it will solve this matter considering there attitude towards the customers.

Back up plan is required to register a new domain name and move the contents on this site there keeping in mind the IPR. I am in software industry and I think many others who are members are also in software industry can help on this front.

[webmaster]

All members who are willing to come, please email me personally. And we do not have time to sit back and think, so please decide soon. Based on the number of volunteers, we would decide our next action plan. You might not see this forum again if you decide not to do anything. If you think that this forum is not worth wasting time, effort and money, it will soon disappear.

[s1joshi]

Today RPS is trying to stop us from using the name in web site address and tomorrow they will stop us from using Savana in our Home Address.. Lets not bow down so easily.

RPS need to understand that they themselves are responsible for the current image.. you do good work and you would would be appreciated but if you do think of cheating us .. We are no fools.