Region: Asia-Pacific

Eastman Kodak and Kodak Korea have won a ruling from the Seoul District Court that the defendant's promotion and sale of photography-related products and services on the website 'kodak.co.kr' infringed the trademark rights of the plaintiffs and constituted an act of unfair competition.

28 January 2002

auDA, Australia's '.au' administrator, has put over 3,000 generic domains up for auction. The domains, which include 'shopping.com.au' and 'sport.com.au', were previously unavailable for registration to businesses.

21 January 2002

A federal court has held that the use online of trade names incorporating the word 'Virgin' constitutes a misuse of Virgin Enterprises' trademarks because that word, when used in relation to a business, has come to signify in Australia that the business is conducted by a Virgin Enterprises company.

17 January 2002

A Beijing court has ruled in favour of 11 multinational companies, including KFC, Boss, UPS, Loreal, Dow and Subway, against two Chinese cybersquatters. The court ordered the de-registration of the domain names, a public apology and punitive damages.

07 December 2001

New Zealand's domain name registry Domainz has suspended Strongnet, an internet service provider, after it launched a spam campaign designed to poach customers from rival Asia Online. The suspension remains in place while Domainz considers whether Strongnet broke any registry rules.

06 December 2001

The Ministry of Information Industry has issued a statement setting out the way in which bad-faith acts involving domain names should be handled. If someone applies to register a domain name, but does not submit formal application documents or the registration fee within 30 days, the application will be denied.

04 December 2001

Singapore companies now have an alternative to the courts for the resolution of disputes over internet addresses. The new national domain name dispute resolution policy consists of a framework for sorting out '.sg' domain disputes and is largely based on the policy rules developed by ICANN.

23 November 2001

auDA, the '.au' regulator, has dropped NetRegistry as the host for the '.au' database. The move comes following disclosure that hundreds of names and contact details were made publicly available.

16 November 2001

The industry self-regulatory body for the '.au' domain, auDA, has issued a request for tenders for the provision of domain name registry services for seven '.au' second-level domains, including 'com.au', 'id.au', 'org.au' and 'edu.au'. The cut-off date for tender responses was November 12.

14 November 2001

Malaysia's Trademarks Act 1976 has been amended to recognize and protect well-known marks in compliance with the TRIPs Agreement. The amendments have important implications for e-businesses that wish to use their trademarks as part of their domain names.

13 November 2001