The fight for the acronym KSRTC seems to be a never-ending one.
Kerala and Karnataka have been at loggerheads for years now, fighting over who was entitled to use the acronym ‘KSRTC’ for its road transport corporation.
But the fight is no longer confined to them, a private blogger too has been dragged in.
In July, this year, the Kerala RTC had sent a notice to blogger Sujith Bhakthan, the person behind a blog called ksrtcblog.com, asking him to immediately desist from using the word ‘KSRTC’.
Now the blog faces another setback with a legal notice by Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation’s asking Sujith to immediately remove all content pertaining to KSRTC from his blog.
“This is a clear case of fraud and falsification where in you are taking the advantages of a well-known brand name like KSRTC, to lure potential customers to your website thereby causing wrongful loss,” the notice says.
Both states want all content related to KSRTC removed from the blog.
“Remove all content pertaining to KSRTC, from your websites including keywords that are used in Search Engine Optimization,” the notice says.
The notice claims that blog was not allowed to share any information regarding Karnataka SRTC.
The notice also warns of legal action under IPR violation if the blogger does not respond to the notice in 15 days.
“We agree that the they have the rights for the acronym KSRTC we use in the website. But other than that, their claims in the notice are false. We don’t carry anything related to Karnataka SRTC. In the notice, they say that we give provisions for booking KSRTC, but we are no way related to them. We just give information that is useful for Kerala RTC travellers,” Sujith told The News Minute.
He also said that they have the domain name ksrtcblog.com and It was owned by them.
“I don’t think they can object to the acronym too. It is a blog giving information about Kerala public service buses, not about any another bus service,” he added.
Many are however not buying the government version or its sudden motive in shutting down the blog.
There is another side to this story. @ksrtcblog did many stories revealing graft and corruption in KSRTC. Last MD wanted the blog to be shut
— vadakkus (@vadakkus) November 26, 2016
Pranesh Prakash who works with the Centre for Internet and Society tweeted:
.@KSRTC_Journeys has filed a frivolous lawsuit against @ksrtcblog cc: @anubhasinha_ https://t.co/5sv1fmem0B
— Pranesh Prakash (@pranesh) November 25, 2016
@logic @anivar @ksrtcblog I would suggest sending a legal notice back for frivolous and vexatious threat of litigation.
— Pranesh Prakash (@pranesh) November 25, 2016
Sujith who has been running the popular blog for eight years says he would give a reply to the notice soon.
The notice however is only for ksrtcblog.com and not for its sub-blog aanavandi.com.