The First Intermediate Court of Beijing opened Wednesday a hearing on a dispute over an Internet domain name, the first of its kind in China.
The plaintiff, Beijing Zhengpu Technologies Development Co. Ltd, claimed that it had applied to use a trademark combining Chinese characters and the Chinese phonetic alphabet -- "a-li-ba-ba", and the company had spent two million yuan (US$241,000) to publicize the trademark.
The company found last January, when it tried to officially register the trademark, that the official China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) had reserved the name for another company, the Alibaba Network Technologies Development Co. Ltd., which had already registered the trademark.
Zhengpu asked for return of the domain name, and claimed that Alibaba's activities had been tortious.
CNNIC and the defendant company argued that Zhengpu's application for the trademark had not been approved by the competent department, and therefore it had no right to exclusive use of the trademark.
The court will make a ruling within a few days.
(Xinhua 04/26/2001)
