shakedown by chinese domain registrars ??

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Mon, 24 Mar 2008, Dave Cramer wrote:

> I have a commercial entity which has a domain name. Recently I've
> had two emails from different domain registrars in china.
>
> The story goes like this.
>
> Dear Sir
>
> We have recently received an application from xyz company in China
> wishing to register visible-assets.cn .... We have done our due
> diligence and have noticed that you have a trademark on
> visible-assets.com. Please email or phone us if you have objections
> to xyz company using your trademark.
>
> I emailed and received a reply (verbatim below)
>
> During the auditing process, we have found that Heiyee company is
> not the owner of the domain name "Visible-assets.com". So we e-mail
> to you for confirming that whether you have consigned Heiyee company
> to register these domain names. If you have no relationship with
> them. According to our working experience, there are 3
> possibilities:

> 1. Heiyee company is a domain name investment company, they want to
> register these names before you and sell back to you to gain
> profits.

> 2. It may be a commercial method, Heiyee company is consigned by
> your competitor to register, make your clients confused.

> 3. Heiyee company register the domain for imitating you web. And
> invade some market of you or link to some illegal porno webs or sell
> to your competitors.
>
> Because domain name takes open registration, this is international
> domain name registration principle. So Heiyee company has right to
> register it. As a domain name registrar, we have no right to dispute
> their application. therefor,Government request us to audit and
> record the application during the process of registration. If the
> original owner company of the domain names have no objection for the
> registration, we could register the domain names for the Heiyee
> company.what is you opinion regarding this case?

if the company that contacted you is truly a domain registration
company in china, i would think this is incredibly unethical
behaviour.  AFAIK, if you're a domain registration company, and
someone approaches you to register a domain, and that domain is
available, and there's no clear reason to refuse, you should have an
obligation to process that registration.  period.

i don't think it's that company's mandate to arbitrarily do a name
search for similar names and contact those holders to try to warn them
about anything and give them a chance to sneak in ahead.
registration companies that behave that way should have their reg.
authorization yanked.

rday
--



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Robert P. J. Day
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http://crashcourse.ca                          Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA
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