Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ together with Online Patent conducted the first ever study “Domain Names and Trademarks in Runet” on the correlation between domain names in country-code zones .RU and .РФ and trademarks registered in Russia. The research results showed that the vast majority of domain names in .RU and .РФ are at risk.
At the moment, there are over 6.3 million names registered in Russian country-code domains (ccTLDs) .RU and .РФ, which puts them on the 8th position in the general ranking of top-level domains. At the same time, according to the national procedure, almost 634 thousand trademarks have been registered in Russia; this is 13th place in the world. The average annual growth for domains and trademarks is over 5% and 8% respectively. The study has shown that only 1.2% of domains are protected under trademarks, which may entail a number of dangers for the rest of the owners.
“The first and the simplest is that domain names that are registered by individual employees leave the company with them. Secondly, when registering a domain an entrepreneur might violate someone’s right to a previously registered trademark without knowing it. Thirdly, after the business takes off, trademark squatters might take an interest in the website of the company”, comments Online Patent’s COO Alina Akinshina. “This being said, if the trademark was registered after the domain name, it might be an attempt of an unfair “recapture”. If the trademark was registered before the domain name, the claim will be absolutely legitimate.”
If the entrepreneur has both - a registered domain name and a trademark – they will avoid some of the listed problems. The domain, as it should be, serves to locate the website on the Internet, while the trademark confers the right of the businessman to the set of symbols that form the domain name. However, this mechanism of protection is available only for legal entities and sole proprietors, while 84% of domain name administrators in .RU and .РФ are individuals. In the legal entities sector only 21 thousand domain names are protected with a trademark and in 75% of the cases the administrator of the domain and the owner of the trademark are different. Each discrepancy like this is a potential litigation, in which the trademark owner usually has a stronger position than the domain administrator.
Andrei Vorobyev, the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ Director, points out: “We pay a lot of attention to the reputation of Russian ccTLDs and it’s extremely important for us that interests of all parties – both domain administrators and trademark owners - are accounted for. The study conducted together with Online Patent allows us to have a deeper understanding of the issues that domain market players might potentially have, and take necessary measures in time.”
Full version of the report and infographics based on the results of the study are available here, general conclusions have also being published on Online Patent and Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ websites.
