Failure to renew a domain name after it expires raises legal risks

In today's Internet era, the importance of website domain names is self-evident. A small domain name carries the image and business development of a company. However, recently, Tiantian Company was involved in a lawsuit because of the failure to renew the domain name in time after it expired. This incident sounded a wake-up call for everyone.

Tiantian Company once registered the domain name "abcd.com" to promote the company's projects. After the contract expired, it did not renew the domain name and stopped using it. It was thought that everything would be fine. But a few months later, Tiantian Company was involved in a lawsuit because the website domain name expired and was deactivated without canceling the ICP registration.

It turned out that Green Leaf Company found that the film works it enjoyed the right to disseminate on the information network were played at will on the "abcd.com" website. After querying the registration system, the domain name was registered by Tiantian Company. Green Leaf Company sued Tiantian Company to stop infringement and compensate for losses.

Tiantian Company argued that it did not continue to use the domain name after it expired, and it was not the actual operator of the website, so it should not bear the infringement liability.

The court held that Tiantian Company did not pay the domain name usage fee after the domain name expired, nor did it redeem the domain name. When Green Leaf Company collected evidence, the domain name had expired for 3 months. According to the changes in the domain name owner provided by the third-party service provider, it is difficult to determine that Tiantian Company still used the domain name to build a website to provide the movie involved in the case after the domain name expired.

Moreover, when the infringement occurred, the name of the website involved in the case was "Mou Ma Cinema", which was inconsistent with the business scope of Tiantian Company, and there was no relevant content on the webpage.

In summary, based on the ICP filing information of the domain name involved in the case, it is not enough to determine that Tiantian Company was the operator or controller of the website involved in the case when the evidence was collected, and Green Leaf Company failed to complete the evidence. The court ruled to dismiss Green Leaf Company's lawsuit.

From this incident, it can be seen that the failure to renew the domain name in time after expiration is by no means a trivial matter. It may not only cause legal disputes, but also cause economic losses and reputational damage to the company.

In daily operations, we must always pay attention to the expiration time of the domain name and renew it in time. At the same time, for domain names that are no longer used, relevant information such as ICP filing should be cancelled in time to avoid unnecessary troubles caused by negligence.

I hope everyone can learn lessons from this incident, attach importance to domain name management, and actively safeguard their legitimate rights and interests. In the world of the Internet, only by ensuring the security and stability of domain names can our business continue to develop healthily.