Publication details
Trade Name and Trademark versus Domain
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2013 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Acta Universitatis agriculturae et silviculturae Mendelianae brunensis |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Doi | http://dx.doi.org/10.11118/actaun201361041069 |
| Field | Law sciences |
| Keywords | Legal character of domain names; commercial name and trademarks |
| Description | Though by their technical nature, domain names are only a different expression of the IP address of the applicable technical equipment, and as such, they are not the subject of explicit legal regulation, their practical use evokes many legal problems. Their nature is uncertain - they can be understood as relative entitlements arising from the agreement of the registrar, or the association CZ.NIC as the administrator of the name space of the domain .cz, but concurrently as an estate analogous to a thing, whose owner has the right to exclude all other entities from registration and use of the same or similar name. Registration brings the domain name to trademarks or the commercial name, but a person of a private right provides it only for the name space of the top-level domain that he administrates, and the name spaces of other top-level domains are thus not affected. They can bring interested parties to the required goods or services, but need not identify the person of a trader or manufacturer. They are definite for the given nodal point in the network, but this does not mean that it is possible to register only one domain name for one person. Since in business relations, they can identify goods, services, their sellers and producers, they can come into conflict with the rights to designations, especially trademarks and commercial names. Thus far, court practice is resolving these conflicts using rules for unfair competition, or rules for protection of commercial names and trademarks, but it is not ruled out that in the future, special legal regulation of domain names could be established. |