Amazon India has become India’s 2nd most popular e-commerce company in a very short span of time and its advertising campaigns have played a major role in achieving so. Its ‘Apni Dukaan’ is one of the best ones when it comes to connecting with Indian audience but Amazon could face copyright issues for this.
A Pune-based businessman Ravi Jain, who had registered the domain name apnidukaan.com back in 2005 wants Amazon India to remove all the content related to this name. Owners of apnidukaan.com, a platform to sell kitchen appliances, electronics and furniture have the intellectual property rights of the brand. Ravi had bought this domain at a price of just Rs 500.
“Our firm and Amazon have no connection. As we own the trademark of Apni Dukaan, we are going to request Amazon to remove references to Apni Dukaan in all the ad and marketing campaigns,”
Ravi said.
He believes that this is the right time to resolve the issue as the company is planning to expand and he doesn’t want investors to think that it is any way associated with Amazon India or its advertising.
“I don’t want investors to be confused and think that my platform is anyway related to Amazon. I want to expand my business and would bring in investors to sell a minority stake in the firm,”
he added.
Amazon has denied saying anything on this. Experts believe that Amazon could offer to buy the rights of this name as this campaign is something that every Indian relates to the company. Even CEO Jeff Bezos referred to ‘Apni Dukaan’ while thanking Indians for their love and support over the last 5 years.
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Amazon would look to have a meeting with Ravi Jain and brother Kamal Jain to discuss the whole issue. Buying the copyrights seems to be the right decision as the company could experience a huge loss to its image if it fails to do so.
