BIZCHINA / Trademark

Case study
(Business Weekly)
Updated: 2006-02-21 09:43

IKEA, the Swedish home furnishings retailer, won a 2001 lawsuit against a Beijing-based company over a domain name. IKEA said it was the owner of the registered IKEA trademark, but when it tried to register its domain name in China, it found the defendant had already registered ikea.com.cn.

GuoWang Co said it registered "ikea" to launch voicemail services on the Internet. It said it had put a lot of effort and investment into preparations and brand cultivation since November 1997. The Supreme People's Court ruled in favour of the plaintiff.

 US-based Procter & Gamble found a Chinese security device manufacturer in 2000 that had registered the Chinese domain name for its popular "Safeguard" brand. P&G filed a lawsuit and said the brand name was widely recognized by the general public, and that it was a widely known trademark in China. The Chinese company asked for 800,000 yuan (US$99,000) from P&G in exchange for the name. The court eventually ruled in favour of P&G and helped it regain the domain name. 

 In 2004, Wal-Mart Stores Inc found that Zhongtie Technological Development Co Ltd had registered the Chinese domain names "wo'er ma.cn", "wo'er ma.zhongguo" and two other related names. Wal-Mart filed a lawsuit in the Beijing No 1 Medium People's Court, which ordered the Nanjing-based storage battery manufacturer to give up the four domain names.

 When Walt Disney Co opened a theme park in Hong Kong in 2005, its Chinese domain name, "dishini.cn", still belonged to a Chinese auto dealer. The company eventually was forced to use "Xianggangdishini.cn" as its domain name in order to avoid any lawsuits.

 When popular Internet search engine Google started planning its Shanghai office in 2005, the company found the Chinese domain names "google.cn" and "google.com.cn" had been registered by a Chinese company. Google ended up paying for these domains.


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