A Study Of Trademark/domain Name Conflicts And Legal Settlements

Trademark has a long developmental history. In contrast, the protection for domain name has just past two decades. The earliest international regulation about it is the UDRP enacted by ICANN. Along with the boom of internet, the conflicts between trademark and domain name can not be negligible any more. Thus, it is necessary to discuss whether Chinese laws are enough to balance the rights of trademark and that of domain name. If not, can china bring in the rich experience in law making of other countries? Because of America as a pioneer in the development of internet, who first comes across such problems and already has had mature experience in dealing with them, this paper will choose America as the reference. There are totally three parts in this paper to analyze the conflicts between trademark and domain name.The first part will amplify the reasons and forms of such conflicts. This paper plans to explain the reasons from three angles: 1) the difference of inner property between trademark and domain name; 2) the blurring ambit of law protection between trademark and domain name; 3) the flaws in the register system of domain name. This paper decides to classify the conflicts into two kinds: 1) domain name infringes trademark, like“classical”cybersquatting, “uncommercial”cybersquatting; 2) trademark infringes domain name, like reverse domain name hijacking, which help to present the complexity of the conflicts in recent years and contribute to solve the first problem in this paper.The second part is chiefly focused on how United States deal with such problems. With regarding to them, United States mainly applies three kinds of laws: 1) Lanham Act in 1946; 2) the Federal Trademark Dilution Revision Act in 1995; 3) the ACPA in 1999.This part will conclude the advantages and disadvantages of their application, which acts as a basis for the second problem in this paper.The third part will discuss three issues. The first one is how china disposes of such conflicts. With the guidance of “the judicial interpretation on the domain name” in 2001, china usually applies two kinds of laws——the Trademark law and Unfair Competition Law, when it faces with such conflicts. The second one is designed to analyze the problems of application of these laws in order to prove the necessity of establishing a special law like “ACPA”. The final one is about how China brings in American experience in solving such problems.