The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) could take legal action over a Web site, which offers company registration services, for using its name and logo without permission.
The online portal, dti.org.za, was registered in 2004 and offers a range of services, including company registrations and tax clearance certificates. Until Friday, it displayed the DTI's official logo, despite not having permission to do so as it is not affiliated with the government department.
The DTI says it has nothing to do with the site, and has slammed the page as being “misleading”.
After ITWeb queried the site's relationship with the government department of the same name, content on the site was replaced with a message denying any association with the actual DTI. The site now says: “Government DTI is not affiliated with this Web site in any way, if you want government DTI please go here dti.gov.za.”
DTI head of communications Clement Manoko says the portal was using the department's identity and information “illegally”. Manoko says the DTI's legal unit has been informed about the site, and the matter will be referred to the relevant law enforcement officials to “explore possible action”.
Neither the DTI nor the Companies and Intellectual Property Registration Office (Cipro) were aware of the site's existence, says Manoko. The entities “appreciate that its existence and alleged fraudulent activities have been exposed”, he adds.
Manoko says the department never gave its permission for the site to use its logo, and wants the logo and information removed. “What is wrong is them masquerading as the DTI... We regard this as fraud.”
The department is concerned the site is misleading and misinforming members of the public, who may confuse it with the official government department, says Manoko. “When people do business with government, they expect recourse if anything goes wrong.”
Incognito
ITWeb investigated the issue after receiving a complaint from a customer, who thought the portal belonged to the department, and was a legitimate online way of registering a business.
The client was allegedly told - in response an application to register a CC - that CC registrations had been outsourced to a private company by the DTI “and I believed it”.
No ownership details are displayed on the site, and there are no contact details such as phone numbers or e-mail addresses.
According to the domain name authority, the site is owned by Nicholas Mbaleki and administered by Antony Last. ITWeb could not locate Mbaleki, but Last says “we are registration agents” and “help people with the business registrations as listed”.
Last, who only responded to a few of ITWeb's e-mailed questions, says he has not received any complaints from people who thought the dti.org.za portal was the official Web site of the actual government department “because there is a clear link to [the] government section and a clear registration section”.
Last adds “we have done thousands of CC registration applications and are well known at the DTI [and] Cipro for our work”.
He threatened to hand ITWeb over to attorneys “with instruction to sue you for defamation and damages” if ITWeb printed or published “any derogatory, defamatory or otherwise damaging statement concerning our company or any of its members”.
No agents
Cipro does not have accredited agents, says head of communications, marketing and stakeholder relations Elsabe Conradie.
Conradie says the office would not accept any of the online forms from the site, as they are not genuine. She explains the electronic forms, which were accessible through the site before the content was changed, do not bear the office's logo.
Services offered through the portal are “much more expensive” than those offered by the official registration office, adds Conradie. For example, a close corporation registration costs R150 at Cipro, but the portal charges R595.
Paul Jacobson, an attorney with Jacobson Attorneys, says the acronym DTI is synonymous with the department. He says the org.za site creates a “strong likelihood of confusion” and there is no “apparent rationale” behind its name.
Jacobson adds the replica site is using the official department to give itself a “degree of credibility”. He says if the department were a business, it could claim trademark infringement.
A gov.org.za site is also online, offering the same services as the previous content on the dti.org.za portal. Gov.org.za is owned and administered by Last.
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