CHINA INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LAW NEWSLETTER
Vol. 4, No. 13 - November 10, 2003
TOPICS THIS ISSUE:
- Lawsuit Between Cnnic And 3721 Settles Down
- .CN Hot, Cnnic Suggest Companies To Register Early
- ".COM.CN" Domain Name At Center Of Legal Spat Between "Madeforchina.Com" And Mpc Trust
- China Eyes Search Engine Supremacy
- Online News A Major Source Of Information In China
China Litigation and Arbitration
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Lawsuit Between Cnnic And 3721 Settles Down
This is a follow-up on a report we had earlier of China Internet Network Information Center ("CNNIC") filling a lawsuit against 3721 Science & Technology Co., Ltd. ("3721") in the Beijing Haidian District People's Medium Court, wherein CNNIC accused 3721 of infringing on its reputation and even declared that it would bring legal penalties upon 3721 at the law court.
On October 20, Beijing Haidian District Court made the first sentence. According to the verdict, 3721's infringement on CCNIC's reputation is a fact, and 3721 is ordered to post an apology to CCNIC at its website for 10 days.
According to reports, the lawsuit has arisen from the illegal remarks of Zhou Hongyi, legal representative of 3721. Zhou Hongyi was accused of saying that CNNIC was illegally founded without the approval from the commerce & industry administration. However, Zhou Hongyi and his lawyer refused to answer whether he had made the remarks at the court. Instead, they insisted that the relevant news medias should assume the reputation infringement liability.
Under the Chinese laws, if the accused refuse to answer the judge's questions, it will be considered as admitting the accusation. Therefore, the court ruled that 3721 should assume the whole lawsuit charge of RMB80 and apologize to CNNIC. If 3721 does not exercise the sentence, the court will publish the main contents of the sentence at the relevant medias.
The attorney of CNNIC said that the ruling had again confirmed the legal identity of CNNIC, and was consistent with the previous effective sentences other court has made. Even if 3721 appeals, the illegality of CNNIC will not be questioned.
"CNNIC is the regulator of domain name registration with the state approval. The legal sentence will help CNNIC to better perform its functions", said Yan Baoping, president of CNNIC.
However, 3721's spokesman, Shu Xu, gave an indifferent comment on the sentence. "The lawsuit between 3721 and CNNIC is only a common reputation dispute. However, it has drawn the wide attention from the public. That is not what we want." The legal department of 3721 will look into the relevant measures to take within the specified period.
Shu Xun pointed out that the dispute between 3721 and CNNIC is a market interest competition. As a Chinese Internet access service founder and leader, 3721 owns a 90% share in the Chinese domain name market. 3721 believes that CNNIC has been using its special identity to seek commercial interest and mislead consumers, which is the ultimate reason for the dispute.
According to 3721, more than 300,000 companies and non- profitable institutions have used 3721's Chinese domain name service to promote brand identification and reputation. 3721 has made an important contribution to the proliferation of Chinese e-business and e-government. Meanwhile, 3721's Chinese email service has also enjoyed good comments among the users.
However, market analysts point out that 3721 will not appeal because CNNIC maintains a good relationship with the government. Meanwhile, 3721 will have to tackle another two lawsuits.
The continuous lawsuits have distracted much attention of 3721, which will be a negative influence on 3721's listing plan. 3721 is now seeking to go public.
(Source: Sino Cast China)
.CN Hot, Cnnic Suggest Companies To Register Early
The Ministry of Information Industry lifted the limits on registration of .CN domain name and the .CN domain name registration was opened to the market since March. Three years after .com fever, war for .CN domain name is becoming hotter.
Chinese corporations think that only .CN is international domain name and will make the corporations seem more internationalized. Wu Yangyi, director of CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) said the understanding is jug handled. He said .Com and .Cn are both domain name of first class and .CN is more of China.
There are 27 million .COM domain names in the world while the number of .CN is less than 1% of the latter.
.Com is developed much earlier and accept registration worldwide while .CN is managed by the Chinese government.
However, .COM has its problems. According to existing international custom, the domain name disputes should be solved in accordance with the rules of law in the location of the domain name management agency. Except language barrier, legal risks are also of concern.
CNNews.com had been the news website of China's Maya Online. The meaning of the name is CN+News, or Chinese news. While in 2001, the US-based CNN sued Maya Online of domain name piracy and claimed for the right of the domain name according to its understanding CNN+News. And the court of Virginia awarded the name to CNN under judgment by default.
When Chinese companies march into the international market, they may find that their brand name in China has been registered by other companies in the international market, including the domain name. They have to change their brand name or even company image design.
It is a misconception that the domain name resource of .CN is still abundant. Corporations are free to select domain names in accordance with their name and brand name. But the reality is not so.
.CN domain name resource has been largely excavated. Director Liu Zhijiang with CNNIC said the domain name of .CN has increased from 120,000 to 260,000. The figure will increase to 400,00 at the end of this year, 1 million at the end of next year and 2 million in two years. According to Wu Yangyi, the number of application for .CN will be similar to .COM.
There are some new characteristics in the new round of domain name war. First, domestic companies' commercial consciousness is following the international trend. Chinese corporations become the mainstay of domain name registration. Second, the registration war is changing from foreign companies' registering the old names of Chinese corporations from Chinese companies registering the name of well-known international companies. Third, domain name trade has become a new aim of IT investment.
A large number of domain name lawsuits are filed in China, in contrast with .COM. Many Chinese companies started to register the brands of foreign companies. The international companies shall pay attention to the trend, said industry insiders.
For example, L'Oreal recently found that the .CN domain names of some of its brands like Helena Rubinstein and Lancome had been registered by Chinese companies. L'Oreal is seeking legal advice on this matter.
Seeing the .CN registration tide, CNNIC expressed that they will stop and oppose vicious registration of well-known brand names-related domain names. .CN now just accept corporate registrations. But CNNIC cannot refuse the registration of normal names. Hence, the sooner domestic and international companies register their brand names, the better.
(Source: Comtex News Network. Inc.)
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".COM.CN" Domain Name At Center Of Legal Spat Between "Madeforchina.Com" And Mpc Trust
Here is another story on domain name. MadeForChina.com brought a legal action against New York registered MPC Trust before China's Domain Name Dispute Resolution Center in Beijing alleging the abusive use of the domain name www.madeforchina.com.cn.
MPC Trust, which owns the domain name www.madeforchina.com.cn, has been redirecting visitors to the address to a page at the website officialspin.com that contains a number of articles which makes various allegations about MadeForChina.com.
Officialspin.com is a subsidiary of MPC Trust. MadeForChina.com is a permission email marketing firm based in Beijing and also the publisher of MFC Insight, a weekly report focused on the IT and Telecom industry in China.
"If (MadeForChina.com) had come to me and tried to discuss the situation with me nicely, perhaps we could have solved it without legal action," Gregg Lloyd Smith, Director of MPC Trust, told Interfax in an interview.
MadeForChina.com is asking China's Domain Name Dispute Resolution Center to order MPC Trust to stop its current actions and to confer legal ownership of the domain name www.madeforchina.com.cn to MadeForChina.com. The legal representative of MadeForChina.com, told Interfax that his client considers the articles about MadeForChina.com posted on Officialspin.com defamatory. MadeForChina.com staff refused to comment on the case when contacted by Interfax.
This case is not the first time that Smith has been involved in a legal action involving a disputed domain name. Amazon.com sued Smith over the use of the domain name Amazon.gr in 1999. In 2002, Smith was sued by the owner of the Swedish newspaper Business A.M. over the domain name businessam.com.
(Source: Interfax-China)
China Eyes Search Engine Supremacy
A Chinese software company recently announced a campaign to beat U.S.-based search engine giant Google.
Huicong International Software's search tool, which covers 200-million Chinese-language Web pages, has incorporated topic categorization, content analysis and China-region recognition into its engine, according to the company.
A unique feature is the ability of the tool to suggest corrections to incorrectly spelled pinyin, a method of using the Western alphabet for Chinese script.
Also, the tool can search MP3s, pictures and Flash animations, claimed Chen Pei, Huicong's CEO.
"Huicong will devote itself to the research and development of Chinese search engines to realize the dream of China's own Google," said Chen.
The company is part of the 300 or so Web portals that make up the China Search Alliance, a group that aims to challenge global search giants such as Google.
Meanwhile, another China search engine, 3721 Technology, plans to expand overseas. The Beijing-based on-line search company, which reaches about 60-million Web users has considered a listing in Hong Kong, Singapore or New York, company CEO Zhou Hongyi, said in a report. The company forged a deal to embed its search service in Microsoft's Internet browser software released in China last year, that enabled its users type only a few Chinese characters directly into the browser address line to find information.
Thanks to the Chinese text auto-completion feature, Zhou said in a report, it is unnecessary for search users with poor English to remember Web addresses for Google and Sina sites.
(Source: The Globe and Mail)
Online News A Major Source Of Information In China
According to a recent Horizon Group survey conducted between May and July this year, Chinese people are flocking to the Internet for their daily dose of news. Television, newspapers, and magazines were distant runners-up. Of 1,151 randomly selected users of Sohu.com, 76.4% cited the Internet as their foremost source of news, praising the ability to swiftly access large volumes of information on virtually any topic. Despite concern over the reliability of online reporting, the Horizon Group found that web-based news still enjoys a relatively high degree of credibility, with 24.8% saying Internet news was 'trustworthy', which nonetheless suggests that a suitable supervisory system similar to that of the TV industry needs to be found. The Horizon Group's survey follows on from an investigation at the beginning of this year by the China Internet Network Information Center, which announced that 53.1% of Internet users went online for the news and information updates.
(Source: China Internet Update)
The China Information Technology Law Newsletter is intended to be used for news purposes only. It should not be taken as comprehensive legal advice, and Lehman, Lee & Xu will not be held responsible for any such reliance on its contents.
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