Indonesia 'has no law on domain name'

JAKARTA (JP): A businessman who is being prosecuted for allegedly illegally registering the domain name of Mustika Ratu.com, asked the court on Thursday to drop the case as the country does not have any legislation governing the matter.

The Central Jakarta District Court should drop the case against Tjandra Sugiono, 32, a former general manager of international marketing firm PT Martina Berto, his lawyer, Didi Irawadi Syamsuddin, argued before the court.

"This is the first domain-name case in the country, so the prosecutor should have explained what a domain name is and the positive law that covers the matter," the lawyer said.

He argued that Tjandra could not be tried under the Criminal Code or the Antimonopoly Law for registering the domain name, which uses the same name as that of PT Martina Berto's rival, PT Mustika Ratu.

Prosecutor Suhardi charged Tjandra last week with fraudulent competition for registering Mustika Ratu.com with Network Solutions in the United States in October 1999 when he was assigned by his company to develop its markets abroad.

Tjandra's lawyer told the court on Thursday that the indictment was ambiguous as the prosecutor had not written the domain name correctly. He said that the name Tjandra registered was mustika-ratu.com, instead of Mustika Ratu.com as written by the prosecutor.

He said that the issue of a domain name was more concerned with civil law and should not be heard in a criminal court.

He also argued that the case should not be tried here, but in the United States.

The trial will resume next week. (04/sim)