[1] See statistics up to March 2004 from Global Reach at http://www.global-reach.biz/globstats/.
[2] See http://global-reach.biz/globstats/refs.php3. As in 2004, there are 80 millions people online in mainland China and Hong Kong represents another 4.6 M. Adding those from Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and those from USA and other parts of the world, the total Internet population using Chinese should become 102.6 millions.
[3] See BusinessWeek Online article titled “China.Net” of 15 March 2004 at http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_11/b3874012.htm.
[4] See WIPO Briefing Paper on “Internationalized Domain Names – Intellectual Property Considerations” by the Secretariat of Word Intellectual Property Organization (December 2001) at http://www.wipo.org/.
[5] Its full name is China Internet Network Information Centre and is the local equivalent of ICANN.
[6] The report is available at .http://www.cnnic.net.cn/download/2004/2004072002.pdf.
[7] This is the ccTLD for China.
[8] Also known as 'Roman' or ASCII characters.
[9] There are other bodies that participated at an international level in the competition for the same Chinese domain name market, including i-DNS.net International, which provides multilingual Asian domain name solutions and services, in relation to those domain names in the format of <中文域名.公司>,<中文域名.組織> and <中文域名.網路>, and Network Solutions Inc., in respect of those Chinese domain names in the format of <中文域名.com>,<中文域名.org> and <中文域名.net>.
[10] The majority in Mainland China uses simplified Chinese characters in their daily lives, rather than traditional Chinese characters as in more commonly used in places like Hong Kong and Taiwan. For example, the Chinese characters for China appear as "中国" in simplified form and as "中國" in traditional form.
[11] By the implementation of the CNDRP, the earlier trial policy, i.e. Chinese Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (Trial Implementation) has been repealed.
[12] See, for example under UDNP, Nintendo of America Inc. v. Alex Jones (WIPO Case No. D2000-0998).
[13] See http://dn.hkiac.org/cn/cne_policy.html.
[14] See http://www.hkiac.org/. At present, there are 22 panelists on the HKIAC panel for resolution of .cn domain name disputes. They are mainly from Hong Kong, but also include those from other places like California, Montreal, Singapore, Beijing and Taipei. Most of the panelists are also with capabilities in Chinese language. HKIAC is also the sole service provider for resolving <.hk> domain name disputes.
[15] See http://www.cietac.org.cn/. CIETAC established its Domain Name Dispute Resolution Center of China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission ("DNDRC") for dealing with domain name disputes. As in July 2004, there are 55 panelists on the CIETAC panel. Most of them were from Beijing and Shanghai. They all appear to be with capabilities in Chinese language and one of the key aspects of the expertise of the panelists seems to be intellectual property law.
[16] Its website is at http://www.adndrc.org/.
[17]. See respectively http://dndrc.cietac.org/static/onexpname/frmainonexpname.html and http://dn.hkiac.org/cn/cne_supplemental_rules.html.
[18] See Article 22 of Rules for CNDRP.
[19] See Article 25 of Rules for CNDRP.
[20] See Article 39 of Rules for CNDRP.
[21] Such arbitration will be governed by the PRC Arbitration Law 1995.
[22] The counterpart provision for this is paragraph 18 of Rules of UDRP. No express guidance is given on how the panel should exercise such a discretion, particularly in the more complicated situations of having concurrent court proceedings not before a Chinese court. See the divergent views, for example, expressed in the UDRP case of Web-Stephen Products Co. v. Armitage Hardware (WIPO Case No. D2000-0187).
[23] Rules for Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy.
[24] See Article 15 and Article 5 of Rules for CNDRP.
[25] This is HKIAC Case No. DCN-0300010, available at http://dn.hkiac.org/cn/cne_decisions.html.
[26] See also HKIAC Case No. DCN-0300004, where the language of the proceedings is in French.
[27] See paragraph 4(f) of UDRP.
[28] This is HKIAC Case No. DCN-0300006.
[29] Under UDRP, the corresponding provision is that: "your domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which the complainant has rights".
[30] In particular, Article 99 of the PRC General Principles of Civil Law provides:
"Citizens shall enjoy the right of personal name and shall be entitled to determine, use or change their personal names in accordance with relevant provisions. Interference with, usurpation of and false representation of personal names shall be prohibited. Legal persons, individual business and individual partnerships shall enjoy the right of name. Enterprises as legal persons, individual businesses and individual partnerships shall have the right to use and lawfully assign their own names."
[31] The legal protection offered to individual names and other names are however different under Chinese law.
[32] This has the force of law in China with effect from 24 July 2001.
[33] The circumstances covered are:-
[34] This may be defined as instances where an owner of trademark rights uses the proceedings in bad faith with the intention of appropriating the domain name held by a legitimate domain name owner.
[35] See, for example, World Wrestling Federation Entertainment, Inc. v. Michael Bosman (WIPO Case No. D99-0001).
[36] See, for example, Post.Com Limited v. Peter Neilson (WIPO Case No. D2002-0690).
[37] This is WIPO Case No. D2000-0003.
[38] This is the case of 'Xian Salala Information Net Limited Company' v. 'Hangzhou Yike Information Technology Services Limited Company' (CIETAC Case No. CND-2004000019).
[39] This is the phonetic equivalent to "Salala" in Chinese.
[40] See, for example, Google Inc. v. Beijing Cinet Info Inc. (CIETAC Case No. CND-200300002).
[41] This is CIETAC Case No. CND-200300003.
[42] This is CIETAC Case No.CND200200004.
[43] This is CIETAC Case No. CND-2003000026.
[44] In that case, the panel also found no bad faith on the part of the respondent.
[45] This is CIETAC Case No. CND-2003000037.
[46] This is WIPO Case No. D2000-0548.
[47] This is WIPO Case No. D2004-0123.
[48] This is HKIAC Case No. Case No. DCN-0400011.
[49] This is WIPO Case No. D2003-0460 where the panel considered that the disputed domain name <hkdongzhi.com> was the same as or confusingly similar to the complainant’s trademark of "东芝" since the key component of that domain name, "dongzhi", is the written format of "东芝" trademark used by the complainant in China, phonetically or in Latin characters.
[50] This is HKIAC Case No. DCN-0300005 where the disputed domain names were <hewlett-packard.com.cn>, <hewlett-packard.cn>, <hewlettpackard.com.cn> and <hewlettpackard.cn>.
[51] This is CIETAC Case No. CND-2004000027.
[52] This is CIETAC Case No. CND-2004000032.
[53] This is CIETAC Case No. CND-200200001.