According to news reports, the logo of the 7-Eleven convenience chain was used as a domain name by an individual and the information on the site was accessed by hyper-link. The suspect was caught and charged by the Criminal Investi-gation Bureau for violating the Trademark and Fair Trade Laws.
After visiting the website myself, however, I discovered the information was not connected through hyper-link, as reports had said; the suspect actually copied everything on the company's website, including the front page and all other pages, without altering a single detail. That's why the company name or the email address of the suspect couldn't be tracked down.
Duplicating 7-Eleven ads, by showing, hanging, or distributing them in a residence, may violate the Copyright Law but doesn't break either the Trademark or the Fair Trade Laws.
However, it's the motive of the suspect in this case and similar cases that matters and should be throughly investigated.
The 7-Eleven website has a box for member applications. But when surfers send in their personal information when applying for membership, they might send it to the "fake" 7-Eleven.
If a person hides codes to intercept such information, the suspect may not only be infringing the Copyright Law, but also be involved in fraud, tapping electro-magnetic records and stealing telecommunication secrets, all of which seriously endanger Web security.
As for domain names and registration of trademarks, many of the official departments around the world that are responsible for trademark regulation have spent a lot of time and money reviewing the registration issue; quasi-standards of evaluation have been estab-lished. Nevertheless, these standards are not objective and different cases have to be decided based on their merits. Many disputes have therefore arisen.
According to court rulings, Tung Yi (2?@) and Tong Erh (2?G), and "KOK" and "KOKA," are not similiar trademarks. However,"Li Hou Kung" (?O3黿d) and "Kung Li" (康?O), "PROFENID" and "PRONID," and "MINITEC" and "TEC" have been found to be similar trademarks.
The organization responsible for domain name registration in Taiwan is the Taiwan Network Information Center, a civilian foundation without government authority. As a result, the quasi-standards applied in Trademark Law are not appropriate in reviewing domain names.
A trademark represents the products and services that a corporation provides. Although a domain name seems like a company name, it is actually a counterpart of an IP address, serving the function of a street address in the real world. As a result, it doesn't constitute the prerequisite required for the application of the Trademark Law.
To reach a website, an internet user has to type an IP address on a browser, which is a string of numbers just like a telephone number; domain names in English just make it easier for people to remember them.
The most efficient way to wipe out cyber-squatters is not to follow the approach adopted by the US. Instead, we can either cancel the English domain name registration or review the registration of company names.
In other words, if people apply with company names, the names of companies should be taken as their domain names (Tung Yi or the English spelling, for example). If there is more than one Tung Yi company, name them Tung Yi 1, Tung Yi 2 and so on. By doing so, the trouble caused by cyber-squatters will be prevented.
This also complies with the idea that a domain name is supposed to be a company name rather than being used as a trademark.
Weng Tzu-te is a chief executive of Tien-Li Intellectual Property Rights Office.
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