China Domain Name Disputes: Recovering Your Brand's .cn Domain

A brand that finds its name sitting on a .cn domain it never registered has a specific, and genuinely useful, remedy. China's country-code top-level domains — .cn and .中国 — are managed by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), and disputes over them are resolved under the CNNIC Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy, known as the CNDRP. The current version has been in force since 18 June 2019, replacing the 2014 policy. It is a fast, low-cost route to recovering a domain — but only if you understand its test, its deadlines and its limits.

The CNDRP's three-part test

To win, a complainant must establish all three of the following (Article 8 of the CNDRP):

• the disputed domain name is identical, or confusingly similar, to a name or mark in which the complainant has civil rights;
• the respondent has no right or legitimate interest in the domain name or its principal part; and
• the domain name was registered or used in bad faith.

The first point is deliberately wider than the UDRP equivalent. The CNDRP protects a "name or mark in which the complainant has civil rights" — not only a registered trademark. A trade name, a well-known unregistered mark, even a personal name can qualify. The third point is also wider in one respect: it is "registered or used" in bad faith, not "registered and used", so a domain that was registered innocently but is now used in bad faith can still be caught. What counts as bad faith and as a legitimate interest is spelled out in Articles 9 and 10 respectively — bad faith includes registering to sell or rent the domain to the rights holder or a competitor, or to prevent the rights holder from using it, or to damage a reputation or mislead the public; legitimate interest includes bona fide use, having become commonly known by the name, and fair non-commercial use.

Two filters to check before you file

The CNDRP is not available for every .cn dispute. First, under Article 2, a complaint is not accepted if the disputed domain name has been registered for three years or more at the time of filing — an old registration takes you out of the CNDRP and toward the courts or arbitration. Second, the remedy is narrow by design: under Article 14 the panel can only order the domain name cancelled or transferred to the complainant. It cannot award damages or costs. If you also want money, a court action is the parallel route, and the CNDRP expressly allows a losing or winning party to take the matter to the CNNIC-location courts or a Chinese arbitration institution.

Who decides, and how fast

CNNIC accredits dispute-resolution providers to administer cases; the established providers include the CIETAC domain-name dispute-resolution centre (now commonly the CIETAC Online Dispute Resolution Center), the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre (HKIAC), and, since 2019, the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center — confirm the current list on the CNNIC website. The proceedings default to Chinese (Article 6), the panel decides within 14 days of its constitution (Article 5), and the decision is enforced after 10 days unless the respondent proves within that window that a court or arbitration body has accepted the dispute (Articles 15 and 16). In practice a well-documented complaint can conclude in weeks, at a fraction of the cost of litigation.

.cn versus .com: CNDRP versus UDRP

The parallel regimes matter when you are chasing a squatter across both a .cn and a .com. A .com (and other generic top-level domains) goes through ICANN's Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), administered by providers such as WIPO or the ADNDRC. The key differences from the CNDRP: the UDRP requires a "trademark" as the rights basis, while the CNDRP accepts a wider class of civil rights; the UDRP requires registration and use in bad faith, while the CNDRP says registration or use; the CNDRP defaults to Chinese while the UDRP defaults to the registration agreement's language; and the CNDRP's express litigation interface points to the CNNIC-location courts or a Chinese arbitration body. A coordinated strategy — the right forum for each domain — is usually cheaper and faster than litigating both.

Building the case

Success turns on evidence assembled before filing. For the rights limb, gather your trademark registrations and any use evidence, remembering that the CNDRP reaches beyond registered marks to names and trade names. For the no-legitimate-interest limb, show the respondent has no business, no mark and no bona fide offering under the name. For the bad-faith limb, capture the offer to sell, the parked-for-profit page, the redirect to a competitor, or the pattern of similar registrations — screenshots with dates are the working currency. The 14-day panel and 10-day enforcement clock reward a complaint that is tight and fully evidenced on day one. Our intellectual-property team advises on both the CNDRP filing and the parallel court route through our intellectual property practice, and the related questions of trademark squatting and bad-faith filings in China and customs IP recordal and trademark enforcement are covered in separate notes.

The CNDRP is one of the better remedies in Chinese IP practice for a simple reason: it is built for speed. A .cn domain parked on your brand is recoverable in weeks if you meet the three-part test and respect the three-year and remedy limits. The discipline is to file early, evidence thoroughly and know which forum each domain belongs in.