How should enterprises protect domain names and brands?
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The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has a fast and relatively inexpensive procedure for handling domain name disputes worldwide, the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). Specifically, if a company discovers that someone has illegally registered a trademarked material or maliciously registered a domain name, it can file a complaint under the UDRP to challenge the owner of the domain name and use it to reclaim or request the cancellation of the maliciously registered domain name.
Sometimes, when people want to register a domain name for their company's registered trademark, they find that the domain name has been taken by someone else. Even worse, these domain name squatters will also merge the registered trademark with their own domain name and confuse potential customers through this squatting behavior, forcing the registered trademark holder to spend a lot of money to reclaim the domain name. This article will provide some suggestions for measures to deal with such domain name squatting.
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has a fast and relatively inexpensive procedure for handling domain name disputes worldwide, the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). Specifically, if a company finds that someone has illegally registered a material for which it has obtained trademark rights or maliciously registered a related domain name, it can file a complaint under the UDRP to question the owner of the domain name and use it to reclaim or request the cancellation of the maliciously registered domain name.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has adopted the UDRP and uses it for all domain names registered with the registry, so that every person or entity that has registered a domain name will be subject to the UDRP. Therefore, the owner of the trademark can file a complaint against the corresponding registered domain name in various dispute resolution institutions recognized by ICANN, such as the National Arbitration Forum (NAF) in the United States, WIPO, etc.
In fact, the process of filing a complaint under the UDRP is quite simple. It only needs to meet the following conditions: the domain name is exactly the same or confusingly similar to the plaintiff's trademark or service mark; the domain name squatter or registrant does not have any legal rights and interests in the domain name; and the domain name is maliciously registered or used.
To prove bad faith, the plaintiff also needs to provide evidence that: the primary purpose of the domain name registrant is to sell the domain name to the owner of the related trademark; the primary purpose of the domain name registrant is to interfere with the business activities of its competitors; or the domain name registrant intends to confuse people with the domain name and the related trademark, so as to attract Internet users to its own website and make profits. It is worth mentioning that in order to achieve the above purposes, domain name squatters often intentionally change the order of certain letters or deliberately misspell words. For example, a domain name squatter may hold a domain name spelled "atuo" instead of the common "auto", so that Internet users may mistakenly enter the website of the domain name squatter in the event of a typo. At the same time, domain name squatters have recently begun to focus on those newly emerging top-level domains, such as .app or .pro, and imagine that one day large companies will consider spending a lot of money to buy these domain names when expanding their business.
After filing a complaint under the UDRP and initiating arbitration proceedings, the domain name holder or registrant will have the opportunity to defend himself. These domain name squatters must prove that they have legally used the above logo or brand and submit corresponding business plans, corporate structure descriptions and other documents proving their legal use of the domain name. However, in most cases, these domain name squatters either lack sufficient evidence or refuse to respond.
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