Group that partnered with Chinese government for IDNs claims that new TLDs will infringe contractual and intellectual property rights.
A legal rights objection is supposed to be filed based on trademarks, but a Singapore company has filed two objections based on alleged contractual terms and patent rights.
i-DNS.net says it has filed objections against Chinese Network Information Center (“CNNIC”) and China Organizational Name Administration Center (“CONAC”) over two of their new TLD applications.
But i-DNS.net isn’t claiming trademark rights. Instead, it says the technology CNNIC and CONAC would use to run the internationalized domain names belongs to it:
CNNIC and CONAC have been using this technology to offer fully IDN .gonsi and .wuyii domain names in China for many years beyond the scope of permission provided by various agreements between the companies and without compensation to i-DNS.net as required by the agreements. As a result, allowing CNNIC and CONAC to operate the .gonsi and .wuyii gTLDs would result in the violation of idns.net’s contractual and Chinese patent rights as set forth in i-DNS.net’s objections.
The company and the Chinese government announced a partnership for alternate root IDNs back in 2005.
i-DNS.net claims WIPO is currently reviewing the objections since they aren’t based on trademarks. i-DNS.net is making a round-about explanation as to how a legal rights objection could be valid for non-trademark issues. If WIPO will not hear its case, then the company says it will pursue other means to enforce its rights.
i-DNS.net hasn’t posted any news to its web site since 2008. I tried calling its international headquarters number but it went to a Magic Jack voicemail account.
Leave a Comment