Travel firm Cox & Kings has filed a criminal case against online travel agency MakeMyTrip India, alleging that MakeMyTrip founder and CEO Deep Kalra and the company’s assistant vice president Rajesh Dalal registered domain names similar to its subsidiary Ezeego1.com in 2007-08 and redirected users from those domain names to their portal MakeMyTrip.com.

According to reports in DNA & Business Standards, Cox & Kings filed the criminal case against MakeMyTrip India on February 18, 2010. Cox & Kings has also filed for damages including loss of business to the tune of $15-20 million. Cox and Kings has also written a letter to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, highlighting MakeMyTrip’s failure to disclose in its registration statement the existence of criminal proceedings currently pending against the company in India.

Peter Lobo, legal consul for Ezeego1.com, has said, “Ezeego1.com spent close to Rs 33 crore in advertising for popularising its domain name. When MakeMyTrip registered deceptively similar domain names, they not only diverted Ezeego1.com’s user traffic of up to 10-20 million hits, but also gained undue advantage due to the popularity of the domain as a result of the advertising by the complainant.”