The recent launch of Chinese-language domain name registration services has re-ignited concerns over Hong Kong's inexperience in online copyright protection.

Until recently, Internet domain names could only be registered using the ASCII text standard, meaning Web site addresses were restricted to unaccented European languages or Romanised languages such as China's Pinyin standard.

However, the situation has begun to change since last November when i-DNS.net International launched a new system which enables online firms to register domain names in complex characters and alphabets such as Chinese, Japanese, Thai and Russian.

(i-DNS.net is a spin-off company of the National University of Singapore).

But the obvious attraction of native-language domains has spurred a new domain name goldrush among speculators hoping to own the equivalent of a business.com or wine.com investment.

If the system succeeds, it will be due to the fact that rather than try to enforce a new address standard on an already unmanageable system, i-DNS converts multilingual Unicode domain names into ASCII to transmit IP addresses across the Internet.

As long as the transmitting server is able to convert an address, the request should reach its destination.

Although the system is not yet widely used, i-DNS has so far teamed up with nine Asian partners to provide registration services. These include HKNet and 3rd Generation Network Information Centre (3gnic) in Hong Kong, TimeNet and Chinese Registration Company in Taiwan, and Portal Science and LGA International in Singapore. In Thailand, i-DNS has signed up Internet KSC, Loxinfo and CS Internet.

 When TimeNet launched its services last December, registrations reportedly reached one per second. Here in Hong Kong, enthusiasm was also high: "Every minute we are getting two registrations for domain names," said Clement Lee, founder of 3gnic.

However, amid all the excitement, many companies have overlooked the fact that their most valuable asset -- their name -- is still not protected by law.

While case law exists in some overseas jurisdictions, Hong Kong courts are yet to judge a domain name dispute, and the registrars responsible for locally-held domains are either not interested or unable to make decisions on trademark issues.

The confusion even extends to the handful of companies currently accredited as i-DNS registrars.

At its launch last month, 3gnic claimed that it had reserved the Chinese names of all companies registered on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong, which it would only sell to legal representatives registering on behalf of their companies.

But i-DNS was quick to refute the claim, pointing out that no registrar could pre-book domain names on behalf of potential subscribers. "The right to register any domain name is solely at the discretion of the subscriber," said Michael Ng, chief executive officer of i-DNS.net.

Jerry Yap, of i-DNS added, "No registrar of ours is allowed to reserve or pre-book names."

Charles Mok, general manager of HKNet, said that he was unaware of anyone registering Chinese names that they were not entitled to.

"But, you can say that some companies are grabbing names of general industries etcetera," he said. "But, in order to avoid cyber-squatting, we do not allow registration names of large or listed companies, govt agencies, or famous people - except by themselves."

"We do have a policy to check and make sure that companies applying for registration that do have a business registration and that they are not cybersquatting on names of public companies," he said.

He added that while no one could register the Chinese names for Cable & Wireless HKT, or Li Ka-shing, generic terms such as business or money, which are less clearly trademarked, were open for speculation.

Considering the rate at which new domains are being registered, observers believe it is only a matter of time before the issue ends up in court.

While i-DNS has drawn up a dispute resolution policy, Yap of i-DNS admitted that conflicts cannot be avoided.

"i-DNS.net International is a pure service provider and provides a registry function. We accept registrations on a 'first-come-first-served' basis. In the event of a conflict, we follow our Dispute Policy," he said.

HKNet has also promised to set up a grievance mechanism to deal with disputes.

But 3gnic will point any disagreements in the direction of i-DNS. "We don't involve ourselves in regulating conflicts," said Lee. "Our stand is not to regulate disputes."

In the international domain, a string of court cases and concerns over the power of US courts to rule on non-US disputes has seen a number of possible remedies drawn up.

In China, the domain name system is still tightly controlled by the China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC).

"CNNIC is producing its own Chinese domain name space," said HKNet's Charles Mok, adding that his firm is in the process of applying to provide .cn registry services, which would make the firm the first outside the mainland.

"CNNIC is more strict. They do not allow registration of general names or names of places, etcetera, and they only allow one name per one company."

While most countries are working on legislation, the US government recently unveiled its Anti-Cybersquatting Act, while the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) have set up a dispute-resolution system under which panels of Internet experts judge whether a trademark is being unfairly used.

The ICANN system is cheaper and faster than taking a case to court. Last month, World Wrestling Federation Entertainment, the Nasdaq-listed parent of the WWF wrestling empire, became the first company to win a domain name battle before ICANN, when a Californian speculator who had registered worldwrestlingfederation.com was told to surrender the domain to the wrestling organization.

Twenty-nine other domain name cases are due to be heard by the body.

In the US and UK, lawsuits are being filed almost daily, but lawmakers frequently struggle to distinguish between cases where corporations use legal muscle to grab attractive domains, and those whose valuable brand is held hostage by Internet pirates.

Online toy store etoys narrowly lost a case last month against an art site named etoy, which had been online since long before etoys existed, while several British councils are considering using the law to grab some of the 15,000 town and village names registered by one speculator.

Here in Hong Kong, things are far less clear cut. Although domain name speculation has existed in Hong Kong for as long as the Internet, most effected companies have either quietly paid squatters to transfer their names, or given up the effort and registered less appealing domains.

Gilbert Collins, a partner in the Hong Kong law firm Boase Cohen & Collins, said that until legislation is drawn up to cover Internet domain names, disputes are most likely to be resolved by following overseas case law.

Hong Kong's domain registration authority, HKNIC, has a policy of putting domain names on hold if an aggrieved trademark owner can prove prior use of a name. However, HKNIC has no statutory authority and its decisions have yet to be challenged in court.

One local speculator, Jeffrey Bhavnanie of Computer Aided Services Hong Kong (c-a-s-h.com), has registered several hundred domain names, some of which, including marcopolohotel.com, mannings.com and trahkfund.com, bear an uncanny resemblance to local companies. IT Daily sister-publication Internet Asia was unable to contact Bhavnanie for a comment on this article before going to press.

A senior executive with responsibility for IT at Mannings, was "reluctant to discuss the matter publicly," but did say that Mannings had already registered what it considered to be suitable domain names.

He added that the company was not concerned if someone else wanted to use a name it had not registered and that the domain name mannings.com was therefore "worthless".

The Hong Kong Exchange Fund's Kent Chen said that the fund's registered domain name was trahk.com and that he could not comment on the issue of cybersquatting.

Ao Sio-iong registered the name excite.com.hk, which points to his entertainment Web site Newsbook.com. Ao said that he registered his domain name on behalf of a third party, whom he would not name, though he admitted that he would be willing to partner with Excite if the Web portal expressed its interest.

A simple lack of knowledge could be enough to trip up many companies in the domain game, according to Naseem Javed, president of branding firm ABC Namebank International.

According to Javed, many companies are likely to change their names rather than fight over the shrinking pool of available domains.

"We have seen, the mother of all speculation in America," said Javed. "Next year this time a lot of names will be changed."

He added that names such as i-businesscorporation, announced last month by HSBC and Hutchison will fail because they are neither original nor memorable. "These type of names do not survive in the long run," he said.

Instead, said Javed, the solution is for corporations to follow the lead of Compaq, who paid US$3.3 million for altavista.com a year ago, and pay the market value for the domains they felt they needed.

"There is no way to protect yourself against squatting," said Javed. The only solution is to get the right name in the first place.

The End