Social media giant Facebook has decided to file a lawsuit against a Bangladeshi software company for trying to sell a domain — facebook.com.bd for 6 million US dollars.
Barrister Moksadul Islam has been appointed by Facebook to initiate the case against A1 Software Limited for creating the domain, and trying to put it up on sale.
Describing the domain facebook.com.bd as “illegal”, Barrister Islam said it had come to their notice a few years back and they had served multiple legal notices to A1 Software Limited to shut down the domain.
The domain facebook.com.bd is a non-functional website, and has only one page with a – ‘For Sale’ notice on it.
The ‘For Sale’ notice said a fixed ‘Buy it Now’ price has been set at 6 million US dollars, and the price is subject to change anytime.
The notice also said interested buyers can directly contact the domain owner on the Email: [email protected].
Since A1 Software Limited did not respond to Facebook’s legal notices, the US-based social media giant has now decided to initiate legal action against the Bangladeshi software company.
Barrister Islam said all “.bd” domain extensions are owned by the Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Limited (BTCL), a public sector undertaking of the Bangladesh government.
“I don’t understand as to how BTCL decided to issue the domain to the software company knowing it well that Facebook’s name cannot be used by anyone else,” Barrister Islam said.
The lawyer appointed by Facebook said “.bd” domain extensions are owned by BTCL, and organizations applying for it need to provide additional documents to prove their legal existence.
Now, the Facebook is likely to initiate legal against BTCL as well as against A1 Software Limited.
Facebook is going to ask for a ‘total ban’ on the operations of the website facebook.com.bd, and is also likely to demand 50,000 US dollars in compensation.
Initial investigations have revealed that the domain facebook.com.bd was registered in 2008.