A Research On The Conflict Between Domain Name And Trademark Rights

The status of e-commerce in a market economy has been greatly improved since wecome to an era of network economy. In this process, the domain name, which acts like a flagto a merchant in the internet, shows more value because of its unique status. But theimprovement of something new will surely attack the traditional rights, and it will cause thedisputes between the new and traditional rights. It will also challenge the progress of the law.This problem apparently also exists in the Chinese legal practice. The conflicts between thedomain names and trademarks continue to increase, making this problem become the focus inboth theoretical and academic circles. The author studied to explore this issue in the form of“Basic Theory”. And I tried to provide some possible solutions to be applied into practicebased on some point of views in the academic circles.The text is divided into4parts expect the introduction and conclusion.The first part focused on the general legal property of the domain name. It was mainlydivided into its definition, characteristics and legal status. I start from the definition of thedomain name and based on this, I compared the domain name and trademark rights.Meanwhile, I analyzed the mainly points on the legal status of domain name in the academiccircles. Then, I made a conclusion that we should treat the domain name as one of theintellectual property because of its similar features to the intellectual property.The second part focused on the reasons that cause the conflicts between domain nameand trademark rights, and also the common type of the conflicts. The author divided thereasons into2parts: the internal and external causes. The internal causes are the reasons thatcaused by the inherent differences exist between domain name and trademark. The externalcauses are the reasons that caused by the defects in the register constitution. At the same time,the author analyzed several common types of conflicts that exist in practice.The third part focused on the analysis of the legislations that related to the conflictsbetween domain name and trademark both in China and abroad. The author mainly analyzedthe U.S., Japan and Germany, in whom the internet is developed. And I draw on the favorableparts. Then I analyze our domestic legislation to adjust the conflict, and contrast with theabove-mentioned countries. The forth part focused on the problems that exist in dealing with the conflicts betweendomain name and trademarks rights and the author also put forward suggestions forimprovement. I believed that the main problems in our legal practice are: the uncertainty ofthe legal status of domain names, the general stipulations on solving these conflicts. Theauthor analyzed the problems and put forward some reasonable suggestions for improvementbased on the foreign legislations mentioned above.