(1) Similarities

If a domain name registrant engages in business activities, its domain name constitutes a business mark. From this premise, domain names on the Internet are strikingly similar to trademarks under the Internet.

Domain name is a sign that distinguishes operators on the Internet. It has expressive function, and also represents goods or services. It accepts social evaluation and is the expression of operators' goodwill on the Internet.

(II) Differences

Domain names can only be composed of characters and numbers, including Chinese, Pinyin and foreign language domain names. In addition to words and numbers, trademarks can also be composed of graphics, which are composed of the combination of words, numbers and graphics. Proceeding from this "physical" premise, domain names may only infringe characters and digital trademarks, but not graphics and combined trademarks.

another difference between domain names and trademarks in the United States is that domain names do not require distinctiveness. Domain names can be industry names or commodity common names, and there is a tendency that the less obvious and common domain names are, the higher their market prices are. For example, for VCD products, people can directly enter vcd.com on the Internet and search without knowing the specific trademark and enterprise name, and they will find enterprises that produce VCD and use vcd.com domain names.

in contrast, if Panosound company produces VCD products, it directly uses the trademark Panosound as the domain name, and the domain name is Panosound.com, and there is no VCD in this domain name. if the trademark of Panosound is not well-known and people can't remember to search with it, then the VCD products of Panosound will not be easily found on the internet.

in the United States, it is these common names that have the least risk and the greatest benefit. On the one hand, it is impossible for generic names to infringe trademark rights, on the other hand, the price of resale of generic domain names is very high. Common names such as car, housing, fastfood, furniture, air-conditing, and computer can not apply for trademarks, but they can form very valuable domain names.

It was reported in the previous paragraph that an American media company asked Tuvalu to sell its national top-level domain name ".tv" to the company, and the asking price was astronomical. Imagine how visually pleasing a company that uses the. tv suffix, if it is shtv.tv, is and how prominent it is among many media domain names.

in the United States, it is not forbidden to use domain names with the words "United States", "America", "China" and "national". With more enterprises using such domain names, people will not feel that these domain names necessarily represent state-level enterprises. The United States also does not prohibit place names as domain names.