Chinese woman faces legal action from .eu authorities

(BRUSSELS) - A Chinese woman who registered 10,000 .eu domain names faces a lawsuit from the domain organisers Eurid and has retaliated by bringing her own legal complaint, Eurid's legal adviser said Monday.

Belgian-based Eurid (European registry of internet domain names) suspects that the woman in question, Zheng Qingyin, "is not really living where she says she is (London) so there is a question about the paperwork she has filed," said legal adviser Herman Sobrie.

He added that the great number of domain names registered by one individual, over 10,000, had raised suspicions and all those domain names have been frozen, meaning they cannot be sold on.

Any person or organisation based in an EU country can apply for an unlimited number of .eu domain names, but even the biggest enterprises have not asked for even half that figure.

"We started receiving a lot of complaints from people who had their names registered," without their knowledge, Sobrie told AFP.

Under the EU rules a person or company who feels they have a valid case for their own .eu internet name can bring a complaint.

Zheng has retaliated by also initiating action at the European Court of First Instance calling for the domain names to be released.

Her case is expected to be heard next month, while the Eurid case could take up to a year to come to court, Sobrie said.

The .eu domain was launched in December 2005 and has so far registered more than 2.5 million names.