Trung Nguyen has once again lost its brand domain name.

The English domain name for Civet Coffee, originally a product of Trung Nguyen Coffee, was registered by another individual who then embedded content promoting a coffee brand soon to enter Vietnam.MaleIt's… Starbucks.

Previously, Trung Nguyên had a history of losing its brand domain names in various countries.

The interface of Legendeecoffee.com on April 18, 2012, displayed an advertisement for Starbucks Coffee.

Trung Nguyen Café is a truly strong brand in the international market, and the company is developing civet coffee, a type of coffee that was already well-known even before Trung Nguyen was established, under names like Kopi Luwak. Trung Nguyen is also developing a civet coffee called Weasel Coffee – a special version of Weasel Coffee called Legendee.

However, it seems that Trung Nguyen has not been able to fully control the domain names associated with its products, including the name Weasel Coffee, which Trung Nguyen itself created, and now Legendee Coffee is also at risk of losing its brand domain name.

Trung Nguyen acquired Legendee.com in December 2011, but a number of domain names that could cause brand confusion related to Legendee have been abandoned.

In April 2012, an individual unexpectedly purchased Legendeecoffee.com. Upon accessing the site, the content promoted Starbucks – a famous coffee brand that was about to enter Vietnam.Male.

Mr. Ha Tuan Anh (director of Vinalink company), analyzing from the perspective of an expert providing solutions related to branding, online marketing, SEO, etc., stated: "It seems that Trung Nguyen's brand development department did not highly value online marketing and the importance of SEO, or Dang Le Nguyen Vu did not have someone advising him on this matter."

According to Mr. Tuan Anh, "Legendeecoffee.com could cause significant keyword confusion in search engines with Trung Nguyen's Legendee product. Furthermore, Legendee.com only has a Vietnamese version and no English version, which is a major problem if Trung Nguyen wants to expand its brand globally. However, if Trung Nguyen's target market isn't overseas, then having an English-language promotional page is... not that important."

Trung Nguyen bought Legendee.com but didn't buy Legendee.com.vn or Legendee.vn, which is quite puzzling, especially if they want to expand domestically. Remember, there was previously information that HSBC was considering entering Vietnam.MaleThey had to "bite the bullet" and spend a huge amount of money to acquire hsbc.com.vn, and eBay had to work very hard to acquire ebay.vn, because a national domain name is a distinctive mark and a factor that builds trust with many Vietnamese customers.

"Regarding the domain name legendeecoffee.com, since the individual does not own the brand but possesses a domain name sequence that matches Trung Nguyen's brand, we need to check if Legendee coffee has been registered for global protection. If it has been registered, then if Legendeecoffee.com uses another coffee brand, Trung Nguyen has the right to sue with WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) to unconditionally reclaim Legendeecoffee.com, of course with a considerable fee that could reach up to 20,000 USD," Mr. Tuan Anh added.

Have Vietnamese businesses still not learned the "big lesson"?

In early January 2012, Bkav announced the acquisition of the bkav.com domain name for 2 billion VND, a price far exceeding the initial cost of 10 USD (approximately 200,000 VND) for bkav.com, which had remained unregistered since 2001. According to a Bkav executive, the company had spent over two years negotiating the acquisition, and the partner refused to lower the price by even a single cent.

Bkav wasn't the only victim of this delay; a number of well-known Vietnamese corporations and companies such as FPT, Viettel, Vinaphone, Mobifone, and Vietcombank also lost their dot-com (.com) domain names. And if they wanted to buy them back, the price demanded by potential buyers was not small, sometimes reaching unimaginable figures.

In 2010, a dispute arose between Trung Nguyen Coffee and Highlands Coffee, owned by Viet Thai International Joint Stock Company (VTI), when the domain name trungnguyen.com.au (the national domain of Australia) was used to promote Highlands Coffee. Trung Nguyen argued that,frissUnfair competition. However, VTI's representative flatly denied this and asserted that they have no connection whatsoever with the company that registered the domain name trungnguyen.com.au, which is The trustee for Hinchliffe Trust.

In fact, it is quite common for the domain name owner to intentionally embed content that damages the reputation of the brand owner, in order to "force" the brand owner to pay to buy back the domain name related to them.

Prior to the 2010 incident, Trung Nguyen had already learned a lesson when a foreign company registered the intellectual property rights to the Trung Nguyen coffee name and logo with WIPO in the US market. Subsequently, Trung Nguyen had to struggle and spend hundreds of thousands of USD to reclaim the domain name.

According to information obtained from the domain name provider Gltec, the individual who registered the domain name legendeecoffee.com is Nguyen Trong Khoa, who claims to own more than 500 international brand domain names from Vietnam.

When informed that the domain name legendeecoffee.com had been registered by an individual not under Trung Nguyen's control, Mr. Dang Le Nguyen Vu requested that the information be forwarded to Trung Nguyen's relevant department and promised to respond soon.

Currently, Trung Nguyen only owns the domain name legendee.com, while another individual owns the domains legendee.com.vn and legendee.vn, stating: "Simply put, I'm very surprised by Trung Nguyen's abandonment of these two domain names. I will give them back to Trung Nguyen if they wish, and I hope that Trung Nguyen will pay more attention to building the Vietnamese coffee brand in the domestic and international markets."

According to VTC News