Baidu.ai domain name dispute, baidu.ai unconditional transfer

Recently, the well-known Chinese internet company Baidu Online Network Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd. successfully transferred the domain name baidu.ai to the complainant under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP).

The holders of the baidu.ai domain name, Shen Junqiang and Wu Bi, claimed that their purchase of the domain name was for the purpose of "respectful reading" and "love". However, the expert panel deemed this to be merely an excuse. After deliberation by the arbitration tribunal, the expert panel ruled that the respondent's purchase of the domain name for $12,000 did not align with the value of displaying a non-commercial poetry webpage. In fact, the domain name was later sold on a broker's website for $50,000 and is currently priced at $29,999.

As a final verdict, the arbitration tribunal ordered the transfer of the baidu.ai domain name to the complainant to safeguard the trademark rights and brand image of Baidu.

Baidu expressed its commitment to actively protecting its intellectual property rights and hoped that this ruling would serve as a reminder to the internet community to respect the trademark and domain name rights of others.

The ruling in this case aims to protect the intellectual property rights of businesses and provide a clear resolution path for domain name disputes.

The complainant is a subsidiary of Baidu and is an internet company operating Baidu search engine, the most popular internet search engine in China. Other products of the complainant include Baidu Maps, Baidu Image Search, Baidu Video Search, and Baidu News Search.

Since 2009, the complainant group has been extensively engaged in research and development in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), such as operating the Silicon Valley AI Laboratory, Beijing Deep Learning Laboratory (formerly Deep Learning Research Institute), and working in the Beijing Big Data Laboratory since 2014 or earlier. Baidu was named one of the four giants in the field of deep learning by Fortune magazine in 2016. The complainant holds multiple trademark registrations, including Chinese trademarks.

The Chinese registrant of Baidu.ai purchased it for $12,000 in 2017 and then placed a poem on its landing page, which automatically updates. At the bottom of the webpage, there is a disclaimer in small characters in Chinese: "Note: This site is a non-profit website under Baidu Technology, unrelated to Baidu, please do not confuse!" In this statement, the second "Baidu" is written as "百度", the same as the complainant's name. Subsequently, for a period of time, the disputed domain name continued to resolve to a poetry website. Chongqing Baidu Technology Co., Ltd. was deregistered on January 10, 2019.

The disputed domain name was purchased by Shen Junqiang for $12,000 on May 27, 2017. On June 23, 2017, the representative of the complainant sent an email to the contact email address of the respondent, inquiring about the transferability and price of the disputed domain name. On July 5, 2017, Shen Junqiang and Wu Bi established a Chinese company named "Chongqing Bairu Technology Co., Ltd." (translatable as "Chongqing Baidu Technology Co., Ltd."). The word "Baidu" in the company name is the same as that in the website title.