10,000 .eu names suspended amid cybersquatter allegation

[diederik]

The organisation behind the .eu domain has suspended 10,000 domain names registered by a Chinese woman whom it accuses of being a cybersquatter. The woman has filed a lawsuit in Belgium in retaliation.

Free OUT-LAW Breakfast Seminars, UK-wide. 1:The new regime for prize draws and competitions. 2:How to monitor staff legallyEURid, the Belgium-based registry for .eu domain names, has blocked the names and has the right to strip the woman, Zheng Qingyin, of the names. EURid legal manager Herman Sobrie told OUT-LAW, though, that the organisation wanted to have a court strip Qingyin of the addresses. He said that case would take around a year.

Qingyin has filed a separate suit objecting to the blocking of the domains in the Court of First Instance in Brussels. This is a fast-track case whose result should be known in a month, Sobrie said.

"This Chinese woman has registered over 10,000 names, she is without doubt cybersquatting," said Sobrie. "We know she sells these names to people for serious prices. This is a phenomenon we don't like at all, but there is nothing illegal about this."

EURid cannot take action against someone for cybersquatting; that can only be done by someone else who claims rights to a domain name. But Sobrie said that EURid had received complaints about the woman and had investigated further.

"We as register can just stand there and look at it except in one situation, which is that maybe this registrant is not eligible to have a .eu domain," said Sobrie. Only people or organisations which are based in the European Union are entitled to hold .eu addresses.

"We started asking for more information about her domicile. She said she was domiciled in London. At first we took that for granted, but we had indications that that was probably not true," he said. "We have serious doubts about the eligibility of that lady and at a certain point we thought we had enough reason to say that she wasn't eligible. Under the circumstances we preferred to sue in a Belgian court and have the names revoked by the court rather than do it ourselves and be sued."

Sobrie would not detail the basis of EURid's suspicions ahead of the court case. He did say that he was sure that the woman was cybersquatting.

"When we screen our data bank we see that some people have an amazing amount of names. Nobody needs 10,000 names," he said. "We had a lot of complaints of people complaining with us that they were contacted or they contacted the holder, who said 'make an offer and we'll sell it'. We know the prices were between €500 and €1500."

Last year EURid suspended over 74,000 domain names and sued 400 registrars for registering the names with a view to re-selling them, in breach of the contract between registrars and the registry.

Source.

 

[Jeffrey]

I hope they don't sue her just for having 10,000 domain names, but because she is indeed if found true not eligible to register, and infringing on other entities' names.

 

[labrocca]

Yeah...like she had 10,000 generic domain names...bullcrap. I hope she lost a lot of money.

 

[Jasdon]

Yeah...like she had 10,000 generic domain names...bullcrap. I hope she lost a lot of money.

Why not?

10,000 names spread across 20 or so European languages.....by your rational, anyone with 10k names must be a TM cybersquatter - that what your saying?

 

[brizzad]

Yeah...like she had 10,000 generic domain names...bullcrap. I hope she lost a lot of money.

How can you think like that with nearly 3,500 posts here? Have you not learned anything on these forums?

 

[Damion]

Why not?

10,000 names spread across 20 or so European languages.....by your rational, anyone with 10k names must be a TM cybersquatter - that what your saying?

That Sobrie guy is saying that though

"This Chinese woman has registered over 10,000 names, she is without doubt cybersquatting," said Sobrie

In Sobrie's own mind someone that has a very large amount of domains is a cybersquater.

"We weten zeker dat ze een domeinkaper is omdat niemand tienduizend domeinnamen nodig heeft"

We know for certain she is a cybersquater because nobody needs ten thousand domains

Source

 

[Sir Regalot]

What use is 10,000 .eu names?

If she sells 10 names a year she has enough stock for 1,000 years. No half-respectable company would buy 10,000 names because they would be tarred with the name of cybersquatter. The names would be no good for traffic because .eu names have minimal traffic.

 

[bobdigital]

There are more things you can do with domains than just buy, park, and sell.
Who knows what she was doing with them?
Out of 10,000 names, I'm sure there was some TMing going on. But whose port doesn't?
and I'm sure she had some generics.
And I'm sure, if and when they do steal her domains, she will not get her reg fees back.

 

[Damion]

What use is 10,000 .eu names?

If she sells 10 names a year she has enough stock for 1,000 years. No half-respectable company would buy 10,000 names because they would be tarred with the name of cybersquatter. The names would be no good for traffic because .eu names have minimal traffic.

Plenty of respectable companies out there that hold even more domains in their inventory:

iReit
Marchex
NameMedia

It's very easy to get "tarred" with the label CyberSquatter because of the variety of misunderstandings that goes with it.

 

[Robert Allen]

How can they LEGALLY do this? People should be allowed to do whatever they want with domains. It is a open market, right?

Rob

 

[kanoodledood]

LOL you guys are disconnected from realities. There is no such thing as 'we can do whatever we want', or 'open market'. The world is highly regulated, more than ever, stop staying behind your PC. This is ridiculous.

I support .EU registry in its fight against the 'Chinese invader'

 

[Damion]

What is ridiculous is that someone can get their domains stripped away and is being labeled a cybersquater just because of the X amount of domains someone owns.


If these domains where acquired in the same type of fashion i have acquired my domains, so no sneaky set ups to gain a unfair advantage and no TM violations then i can not see any justified reason for these domains to be stripped away.

If the domains are registered to a European entity, business or other type of legal entity then should the domains be stripped away it's not due to regulation but due to incompetent leadership.

 

[Dave_Z]

How can they LEGALLY do this? People should be allowed to do whatever they want with domains. It is a open market, right?

Except what's stated in the agreement, of course.

Unfortunately people generally aren't required to see how another sees it. If
they're the ones in power, be ready to play along if need be.

 

[AdoptableDomains]

"This Chinese woman has registered over 10,000 names, she is without doubt cybersquatting," said Sobrie. "We know she sells these names to people for serious prices. This is a phenomenon we don't like at all, but there is nothing illegal about this."

EURid cannot take action against someone for cybersquatting; that can only be done by someone else who claims rights to a domain name.

"We as register can just stand there and look at it except in one situation, which is that maybe this registrant is not eligible to have a .eu domain," said Sobrie. Only people or organisations which are based in the European Union are entitled to hold .eu addresses.

From the above, they have already admitted they can't take the names just because she has a large amount or even if she is a true cybersquatter. They admit that nexus rules are the only reason they have cause to revoke the names. You break the rules you take the risk. If she in fact did legally start a business in the EU to own them in the rules, then she should be safe from the registry (but not from any TM owners). If not, then she gambled and lost.

It's hard to keep a low profile when you own that many names from the launch in a single TLD, particularly when your origin is easily questioned as in this case.

 

[verbster]

We know for certain she is a cybersquater because nobody needs ten thousand domains

We also know for certain that Bill Gates is a space alien from Planet Fauty Logic because nobody needs 10 billion dollars.

 

[jmcc]

The Zheng operation is, in my opinion, an organised cybersquatting/cyberwarehousing operation. It has been registering business names and trademarks and then trying to sell them back to the intellectual property rights owners. Many of the domains squatted by the Zheng operation are TMs. If I recall correctly, the registrations were made through two Chinese registrars. Zheng also has lost the most ADRs.

The reason that Sobrie is concentrating on the generics angle is because of the active cybersquatting problem. It makes EURid look bad that it didn't take any action against cybersquatting and cyberwarehousing operations.

And I've got the list of at least 10K of the domains that Zheng has registered. My opinion on the incompetence of EURid and its management is well known.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Peter]

How can they LEGALLY do this? People should be allowed to do whatever they want with domains. It is a open market, right?

Rob

They can legally do this because they merely lease you the domain name. If they feel you have gone against anything within the AUP or TOS (no matter how minor) they can withdraw it.

Look at what happened with the 1 char .la domain names recently, they decided they should not have been available to start with so are not allowing anyone who has 1 the ability to renew them when the time comes.