Cox & Kings files criminal suit against Makemytrip

The promoters of Cox & Kings, one of the oldest travel companies in the world, have filed a criminal case against Makemytrip India Pvt Ltd, the venture capitalist-backed online travel and hotel booking firm.

In its petition filed on February 18, 2010 Cox & Kings has alleged that Makemytrip founder and CEO Deep Kalra and the company’s assistant vice president Rajesh Dalal violated India’s Trade Mark Act, 1999. The company has also filed for damages including loss of business to the tune of $15-20 million.

According to Peter Lobo, Indian legal counsel of Cox & Kings and www.Ezeego1.com, the accused (Makemytrip) intentionally deceived the users of internet to cheat Ezeego1 by creating and registering half-a-dozen deceptively similar URL domain names.

“The matter was discretely brought to the notice of the Makemytrip management and their response is a clear indication of their confession to this malpractice. We have official communication substantiating the same and it has been submitted to the court of the additional chief metropolitan magistrate in Mumbai,” said Lobo.

Interestingly, Makemytrip, which is soon to be listed on the Nasdaq, did not disclose the existence of a criminal proceeding for the said violations in its pre-IPO registration statement (DRHP).

On August 5, 2010, Cox & Kings also wrote to the US regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission, that Kalra has failed in making a disclosure of the criminal case in his DRHP filed for raising $100 million IPO with Nasdaq.

Makemytrip listed on the Nasdaq on Thursday, completing a $70-million initial public offering. Calls to Deep Kalra’s cellphone and one of Makemytrip’s venture capital investors, Helion Venture Partners, went unanswered.

Cox & Kings has submitted registration details of the deceptive URLs that show the registrant’s name as Rajesh Dalal and organisation’s name Makemytrip India Pvt Ltd.

Cox & Kings also pulled out data from Alexa (a monitoring agency for web traffic on a particular website) that shows the various deceptive URLs attracted over 23 million visitors when the domains were active.

Cox & Kings launched its Ezeego1 venture in December 2006 and supported it with a massive advertising and promotional campaign globally the budget of which ran into in to several crores.

According to Cox & Kings, between 2007 and 2008 the Makemytrip management created the similar looking URLs to deceive customers and eventually lead them to their own site www.makemytrip.com.

“The accused were able to divert substantial traffic to the aforesaid deceptively similar domain which were surreptitiously registered by Makemytrip which has resulted in huge losses to CKL’s online travel portal business under the name www.Ezeego1.com in terms of business and number of hits. We are also filing for damages in the region of $15-20 million,” Lobo said.