Research On Conflict Between The Interests Of Domain Name And The Right Of Name

Every computer on the Internet needs an address, which is called Internet Protocol Address (IP), so that information can find its way to the right recipient. The IP is structured with thirty-two bit numbers and can't be remembered easily by Internet users. For ease of use, domain names are originally used to map to the IP addresses. As everyone knows, there is some interests in domain names, which hasn't been recognized by any country as a kind of civil rights or intellectual property rights, but such interests owned by domain name holder has been generally protected in the legal system of any country. That is to say, although the interests in domain names is not recognized as a right, it is definitely legal interests which is called interests in domain name. Meanwhile, since there are some similarities between such interests and intellectual property rights, it could be concluded that such interests in a new kind of civil interests that is similar to intellectual property rights. It is quite different between the interests in domain name and personal name right, while people are free to register personal names as domain names to practice their name rights online, lots of conflicts between these two in the Internet are coming, which are not only including civil torts, but also the conflicts when both parties have legal rights to use the name and both want to register the name as domain name and so on. Thus, this article classifies the conflicts between the interests in domain name and personal name right and also analyzes the fundamental reasons based on such classification. Such conflicts should not be ignored by law. But up to now, the present legal system and dispute solution mechanism in China can't settle the complicated problems well, while other countries such as U.S.A. and Germany do it very well, whose experience could be greatly helpful to improve our own legal system in this field. In order to improve our own legal system to solve the conflicts between domain names and personal names, the author concludes that at least three mechanisms should be structured: the first one is the domain name pre-registration mechanism; the second is interests balance mechanism based on the principle "legal interests protected equally but prior and important interests protected first"; the third one is improved dispute solution mechanism.