EURid, 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.
