| VietNamNet Bridge – The domain name war
has become stiffer and more and more Vietnamese enterprises are experiencing
troubles due to bad management of their domain name. The owner
of the famous Vietnamese Trung Nguyen brand name Dang Le Nguyen Vu said that he
is preparing for a “legal war” where he will sue a Chinese business for
illegally using Trung Nguyen’s G7 trademark in China. Therefore, dealing with the
complications relating to the enterprise’ domain name has been postponed. The story
began 10 years ago, when Trung Nguyen had trouble with its domain name in the US. The same
problem also occurred in Australia,
and Vu said he continuously receives proposals from partners to sell his domain
name. Another headache is that the
domain once
belonged to an individual in Japan. The big lessons Pham Viet
Anh, Chair of Leftbrain Connector, a consultancy firm, received a proposal to
sell the domain name with the suffix “.cn” from a company in China. Anh
related that previously the company registered for ownership of two domains,
including one in Vietnam
with the suffix “.vn” and the other with the suffix “.com”, thinking that two
would be enough for a small company. Anh admitted that to date, he still is not
thinking of expanding operations to foreign countries. He juststill focuses on developing the
domestic market, and therefore does not think that his enterprise’s domain name
would be appropriated by someone. However,
Anh thinks that the disputes relating to the domain name are always long and
complicated stories. Both Vu and Anh think that the domain name war has become
stiffer and more and more Vietnamese enterprises are experiencing trouble due
to poor management of their domain name. Vu said that the story about a Viet
Kieu (overseas Vietnamese) registering Trung Nguyen’s domain name is a big
lesson for everyone. A bustling domain name market has taken shape in the
world, where traders predict the development potentials of enterprises in
developing countries, including Vietnam,
and they register the domain names before the enterprises themselves, so that
they can sell the domain names to the actual owners of the domain names for
profit. How much are the domain names? According
to Thoi bao Vi tinh Saigon, recently the
trading of domain names has become more active, especially after the Ministry
of Finance released a new document in November 2010 stipulating the fees to
register and maintain domain names. Whenever
enterprises come to management agencies to register domain names, they are told
that the same domain names have been registered before by other people or
institutions. After that, the enterprises receive emails that say that the
enterprises will get the domain names which match the enterprises’ names, if
they agree to pay money, large sums of money. Analysts
have pointed out that it is now not costly to register and maintain a domain
name, while the owners of domain names can earn large sums of money from
selling the domain names which are “beautiful”, easy to remember, or from names
that coincide with the names of famous profitable enterprises. According
to the Vietnam Internet Network Information Centre, in order to maintain the
international domain names with suffixes “.com”, “.net”, “.org”, enterprises
have to pay an annual fee of 570,000 dong. The fee for maintaining the domain
names with two or three characters with suffix “.ws” is 11,269,000 dong and
18,909,000 dong plus the fees to establish the domain. A domain name with the
suffix “.vn” has initial fees of 350,000-450,000 dong on average and the
maintenance fees of 480,000-600,000 dong. The same fee levels are also applied
to the domain names with suffixes “.com.vn”. According
to the latest decision by the Ministry of Finance, the highest domain name
granting fee is 350,000 dong and the highest maintenance fee is 40 million dong
per annum. At this
moment, the domain name phamnhatvuong.com, which coincides with the name of the
Vietnamese well known businessman Pham Nhat Vuong, who is considered the
richest Vietnamese stock millionaire with the stock assets of $780 million, is
being offered at $100,000. Meanwhile, trandinhlong.com, which coincides with
the name of the owner of Hoa Phat Group is being offered at $80,000. About 3700
domain names are being offered on bantenmien.vn. Especially, caulacbodaigia.com
and kimcuongdaquy.com are being offered at $25,000, while mydinh.com at
$322,277. Source: Thoi bao Vi tinh Saigon | 
