Trademark is the company’s external business card. In many cases, it is the trademark that determines a person’s initial impression of a company. It fully displays its distinctiveness so that people can notice it immediately. Therefore, it is very important for a company to have its own trademark, and the trademark can increase in value as the company grows.
As for the domain name, it is a symbol of the Internet. In a sense, it is actually somewhat similar to the function of a trademark. It can highlight the Zhibajie intellectual property brand or It is a symbol of the uniqueness of a product, but because of this, there will also be conflicts between them. So, what are the reasons for conflicts between trademarks and domain names?
The domain name is highly identifiable. The domain name is the company's address on the Internet. Users can use this address to find the company's online portal. In addition, as the company's logo, the domain name is highly iconic and represents the company's credibility.
One of the distinctive features of a trademark is that it serves as a symbol and has the function of originating from different products or services, reflecting the credibility of the store. Therefore, merchants often register their more distinctive trademarks as their own domain names, and at the same time carry out extensive advertising to integrate them with their own trademarks to form differentiated products or services on the Internet. The source of the logo is an important way to reflect the store's reputation. This is also the fundamental reason why disputes between domain names and trademarks are so easy.
Domain names are unique and non-regional. Each domain name is unique on the Internet and around the world. A domain name only matches one IP address. Once a domain name is registered, no one else can register the same domain name again.
Trademark protection has the characteristic of distinguishing the classification of goods and services. Therefore, the same trademark can be registered on different types of goods or services. The uniqueness of domain names and the differentiation of goods and services differentiated by trademarks have become important factors in disputes between domain names and trademarks.
The "first apply, first registered" rule for domain names is a unique registration rule for domain name registration. During the entire registration process, the domain name registration and filing organization does not bear the responsibility for search and verification.
These special standards are mainly considered from the perspective of technology and convenient Internet use, and they still need to be communicated with relevant legislative bodies in advance, so the two will inevitably be incompatible in some places. Therefore, the pre-registration of domain names has also become a technical reason for the conflict between domain names and trademarks.
Trademarks and domain names have both similarities and differences, so companies need to weigh the contradictions between the two, but both are very important to the company.