Discussion On Problems Of Domain Names And Trademark Disputes

Recent years has witnessed a dramatic increase in cases regarding domain namedispute. Among these cases, trademark t and domain name conflicts has taken a largeproportion.Domain name and trademark have many similarities in their nature of law, butthey falls into different categories of protection system. Therefore, a new system ofsettlement must be set up to coordinate the conflicts between the two different rights.Currently, there are two major ways to settle trademark and domain namesdispute, and they are mechanisms employed by domain name registrationorganizations to settle domain name conflict, and judicial procedures adopted bymany countries. In addition, traditional arbitration and mediation also works to settledomain name conflict. However, so far no countries has given implicit conclusionwith regards to several fundamental issues such as the right attribute and legal statusof domain name as well as the relationship between domain name and intellectualproperty right. Meanwhile, no conclusion has been arrived at in the circle ofintellectual property and law. These issues are still in the stages of discussion.The definition of the law nature of domain name varies among different countries,and so does the regulations and policies with regards to the trademark rights anddomain name. Therefore, standards must be inconsistent among countries when itcomes to deal with the infringement of trademark rights. World Intellectual PropertyOrganization (WIPO) has made attempts to set up a mechanism within internetindustry to settle conflicts, so as to standardize the settlement procedure of domainname disputes. Therefore, WIPO, Internet Corporation for Assigned names andnumbers (ICANN) and domain name management organizations have adopted asettlement policy relevant to trademark dispute. Amongst, Uniform Domain NameDispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) has worked as a compulsory administrativeprocedure to standardize the settlement procedure of domain name disputes. Theset-up of UDRP itself works for the purpose of coordinating trademark laws among different countries and unifying domain name policy, and hence UDRP contains a setof detailed substantive rules and procedural rules regarding domain name disputesettlement. It also contains the applicable substantive rules used by WIPO Arbitrationand Mediation Center to settle domain name dispute, and it builds up the foundationof substantive law system for WIPO to arbitrate domain name dispute. Furthermore,this set of rules has been widely applied in practice and gradually developed.Therefore, research on these rules has critical meanings in developing and perfectingthe domain name dispute mechanism in China and all over the world.This paper begins with the law nature of trademark and domain name and it goesfurther to analyze the reasons and cases for conflicts between them. Based on thecurrent law and regulations, this paper summarizes the current mechanism to settle theconflict of trademark and domain name, on which basis suggestions are furtherproposed.