How do you view domain name squatting? Is domain name squatting acceptable?

Speaking of this issue, I believe that many terminals hate it, and some friends are also very resistant to it. The key lies in the word "抢" in preemptive registration.

Distinguish the concepts and treat them differently

The full name of preemptive registration should be "preemptive registration" rather than "snatching registration", which refers to the act of registering a valuable domain name before others. The reason for the phenomenon of preemptive registration is that domain names are scarce and non-renewable resources. Good domain names are like houses in good locations. The first to register is the first to get. Preemptive registration is a benign behavior and a legal means of domain name registration. From the perspective of various developed domain name systems in the world, "first to register, first to get" is an international practice. Since preemptive registration of domain names is not illegal and is in line with international practice, why is it controversial in China recently? At present, many voices questioning domain name preemptive registration and domain name investment actually confuse two concepts: preemptive registration and malicious preemptive registration. Lawyer Yu said that from the perspective of international practices and current domestic management rules, domain name preemptive registration is not a violation of regulations.

What is listed as a violation is the "malicious preemptive registration" behavior. The so-called malicious registration has relevant provisions in domestic and foreign management methods, mainly referring to registration behaviors that damage the rights of others. Obvious malicious registrations include: registering a domain name of a well-known enterprise and selling it to the enterprise at a high price. This is a typical malicious registration. Lawyer Yu said that the determination of whether the registration is malicious involves very complex situations such as the rights of registrants and complainants. It is not easy to identify the situation at a glance, and it needs to be determined by arbitration institutions or courts. For example, the domain name registration incidents reported by the media are mostly concentrated on COM domain names managed by the United States, such as "Prime Minister.com", "microsoftrebate.com", etc. These disputes need to be resolved by the corresponding institutions in the United States.

Correctly view the domain name registration process and management

For the extremely low probability event that there may be a domain name rights dispute, can the method of first review and then registration be adopted to circumvent it? In this regard, Professor Xue Hong of the China Foreign Affairs University said that in international practice, domain name registration adopts the principle of "first application, no review". The principle of first application and no review is in line with the resources and capabilities of domain name registration organizations. Domain name registration organizations mainly bear technical management responsibilities and are unable to be competent for intellectual property review responsibilities. More importantly, the principle of first application and no review is also in line with the reality of the Internet era. Imagine if domain name registration also needs to go through multiple procedures such as preliminary review, announcement, objection, and approval for several years like trademark registration, how can the international Internet achieve such great development in just a few years? Moreover, trademarks can be used in the market without registration, but domain names can only be used on the Internet after registration. Therefore, prolonging the time of domain name registration will have a huge negative impact on the development of my country's Internet.

First of all, domain name registration and management agencies do not have the statutory "power" to protect intellectual property rights. Secondly, domain name registration and management agencies are service agencies set up to meet the needs of network development and operation, and do not have the "ability" to protect intellectual property rights. In addition, in addition to respecting the intellectual property rights of others in their own activities, domain name registration agencies do not have the "obligation" to protect the intellectual property rights of others against the behavior of third parties. Tang Guangliang particularly emphasized that if domain name registration and management agencies exercise "powers" beyond their "obligations" without "ability", it will bring unnecessary troubles to normal domain name registrations and unnecessary disputes to domain name registration management agencies.

Domain name rights should not be curbed by trademark rights

In response to the view that domain name registration management agencies should introduce measures to protect trademark rights holders, lawyers in the intellectual property field have demonstrated the impracticability of this approach from a legal perspective. The probability of trademark overlap is very high, and it is impossible to establish a one-to-one correspondence between domain names and trademarks. Trademarks often overlap in different categories of goods. For example, "Great Wall Brand" has registered trademarks for everything from cars to ink, and they belong to different entities. If the domain name registered by Great Wall Ink is deleted because Great Wall Motors raises an objection, it is obviously an infringement of the rights of Great Wall Ink. If this contradiction extends to corporate name rights and trade name rights, the risks will be even more difficult to control.

In terms of legal rights, domain name rights are also one of the important rights and should not be ignored because of trademark rights. Jiang Xiaoliang, an arbitrator of the Suzhou Arbitration Commission, believes that most existing trademarks are composed of common words (English or the native language of the trademark owner), and language itself is not exclusive to anyone. The Trademark Law protects words, patterns or their combination that can prevent goods or services from being confused. It does not protect the exclusive right of the trademark owner to the common words on his trademark, just as "Great Wall" Automobile does not have the exclusive right to the two Chinese characters or pinyin of "Great Wall". If the trademark owner claims to have exclusive rights to the common words on his trademark and prohibits others from registering domain names with common words, it is an abuse of rights.

Based on many judicial practices, the conflicts of interest between trademark registrants and domain name holders are different in each case and involve complex legal issues. In this regard, judges who specialize in handling such disputes are extremely cautious. If the existing domain name ownership is fully adjusted based on the trademark as the standard, this "administrative one-size-fits-all" approach is not feasible at all, and will artificially create chaos in the existing domain name system, which is contrary to the great principle of harmony. Just as "Great Wall" may be registered as different trademarks by different people in different categories and different countries (the total number may be thousands), it is difficult for the domain name registration management agency to decide who owns it.

In fact, domain name squatting is a normal investment behavior as long as it is not malicious, just like stock speculation. You can say it is risky, but don't think it is unforgivable. The unforgivable ones are those who maliciously squat, and the Trademark Law will punish them.