Chinese Domain Hijacking It is not uncommon for an Australian company to receive an email from a domain name registrar in China advising that a Chinese company is seeking to register a Chinese domain name that contains the Australian company’s trade mark. The Chinese registrar will often claim that it is either legally obligated to provide this warning or that it is providing the warning as a courtesy. However, Chinese domain name registrars are not required by law to provide such warnings to Australian trade mark owners. In most cases, it is likely that the threatened applications to register domain names containing the Australian trade mark do not exist. The Chinese company allegedly trying to register the domain name may not even exist! Australian companies are prime targets of an increasingly common ploy by certain ‘enterprising’ Chinese domain name registrars who wish to convince brand owners that their trade mark is about to be hijacked in Asia. This practice at worst can be characterized as a scam (it would likely be considered illegal under Australian law), or at best a scare mongering tactic designed to drum up business. The recipients of emails from Chinese domain name registrars who decline to take the bait often find that the cited domain names subsequently remains available and unregistered. Whether or not an Australian business registers a domain name in different countries should be a decision based purely on its needs in those countries. In most cases, if a business already has a website in Australia, that website will be accessible from most countries, including China. Protecting your brand online Although little weight should generally be given to unsolicited ‘warnings’ from Chinese registrars, the protection of brand names online is an important issue to be considered by all Australian businesses. Many businesses will seek to register their core brands in key domains (e.g. , .au, .biz) as a defensive measure. The cost of obtaining such defensive registrations is often much less than the cost of going through a formal domain name complaint procedure if the domain is subsequently hijacked by an unscrupulous scammer. Furthermore, ICANN will soon start approving the use of many new top level domains (e.g. .kids, .eco, .shop). These domains will have ‘sunrise’ periods where owners may be able to notify the Registrar of their trade mark rights to stop third parties registering domain names containing their brand. If you would like advice on strategies for protecting your brand online, including notifying your brand in the sunrise period for any new top level domain, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 02:57:32 +0000
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