Legal Issues On Domain Name And Its Management

With the rapid development of the Internet and domain name registration, so many domain name disputes arise. It seems that there are so many problems in domain name and its management. How to solve the problems and how to reconstruct a uniform and scientific domain name system are big issues for us. This thesis is to discuss some legal issues on domain name and its management.Part One describes the domain name and domain name right. It first introduces where domain name comes from, what domain name is, the structure of domain name and legal characters of domain name such as every domain name is unique in the world, the domain name registration resource is scare, domain name has the source indicating significance and domain name is valuable. As domain name has these legal characters, the thesis analyzes the legal nature of domain name. The author thinks that since domain name has some characters similar to trade mark, it should be an independent area of intellectual property.Part Two analyzes the domain name system and relevant legal issues. It reviews the history of the domain name system and points out that the domain name system is controlled by the US government whenever it is administered by IANA, NSI or ICANN, although it is challenged by other governments, international organizations and non-government organizations. It is recognized that the endeavor of the World Intellectual Property Organization to participate in domain name system, but WIPO is still a tool in the hand of US government to control the domain name system. Although domain name regulations in China identify the relationship between domain name and trademark, trade name and other names, there are still some domain name disputes. It also introduces the history of domain name dispute resolution system and legal issues involved. It further introduces Chinese domain name and multilingual domain names and their compatibility.Part Three analyzes and comments several types of domain name disputes and judicial practice of some countries. The main domain name disputes are as follows: trademarks v. domain names, trade names v. domain names, geographical names v. domain names, names of celebrities v. domain names, names of international organizations v. domain names, INNs v. domain names, domain names v. domain names, domain names v. trademarks, domain names v. site names and co-existence of legitimate rights. Most of them involve in trademark infringements and other legitimate rights infringements, and some of them involve in domain name infringements.Part Four introduces some main resolutions on domain name disputes. It first introduces the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy stipulated by ICANN according to the suggestion of the WIPO. The legal characters of the policy, how to complaint under the policy and the effectiveness of the award are analyzed in this part. Then the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act of the USA is introduced; especially the principles to resolve the conflicts between domain name and trademark, individual name and historical names are analyzed. At last, the trademarkable domain names are introduced. It means that in USA and China, some domain names have any source indicating significance can be registered as trademark. The limitations of this kind of domain name protection are also pointed out.Part Five summarized the defect of the domain name system: it leads to cybersquatting; only some domain name disputes can be resolved under the dispute resolutions; it cannot prevent trademark infringement and domain name infringement; the 'A' root server is controlled by the US government which is conflict with the internationalization of the Internet and will result in arising other parallel root server. Therefore, it is necessary to conclude some international treaties to reconstruct a uniform and scientific domain name system. The author thinks that the new system should be on the basis of confirming the domain name right, and adopt some valuable principles of the trademark protection. Under...