Trung Nguyen lost its brand domain name again.
The English domain name of Weasel Coffee, which is a product of Trung Nguyen Coffee, was registered by another individual and embedded with the content...
The English domain name of Chon Coffee, which is a product of Trung Nguyen Coffee, was registered by another individual and embedded with promotional content for the coffee brand that is about to enter Vietnam.
Previously, Trung Nguyen had a history of losing its brand domain name in many different countries.
The interface of the Legendeecoffee.com page on April 18, 2012 was presented with advertising content for Starbucks Coffee.
Trung Nguyen Café is a truly strong brand in the international market and this company is developing civet coffee, a type of coffee that has been known to many people since before Trung Nguyen was formed as Kopi Luwak. Trung Nguyen has developed a type of civet coffee called Weasel Coffee - the special version of Weasel Coffee is Legendee.
However, it seems that Trung Nguyen cannot control all the brand domain names related to its products, including the name Weasel Coffee created by Trung Nguyen itself, and now Legendee Coffee is also at risk of losing its brand domain name.
Trung Nguyen bought Legendee.com in December 2011, but a series of domain names that could cause brand confusion related to Legendee were "abandoned".
In April 2012, an individual unexpectedly purchased Legendeecoffee.com. When accessing this address, the content on the website promoted Starbucks coffee - a famous coffee brand that was about to enter Vietnam.
Mr. Ha Tuan Anh (Director of Vinalink company) analyzed from the perspective of an expert providing solutions related to branding, online marketing, SEO... and said: "It seems that Trung Nguyen's brand development department does not appreciate online marketing and the importance of SEO, or Dang Le Nguyen Vu does not have anyone to advise him on this matter."
According to Mr. Tuan Anh, "Legendeecoffee.com can cause a lot of confusion in terms of keywords in search pages with Trung Nguyen's Legendee product. In addition, Legendee.com only has a Vietnamese version and no English version, which is a big problem if Trung Nguyen wants to develop its brand globally. But if Trung Nguyen's goal is not the foreign market, then of course having an English promotional page is... not very important."
Trung Nguyen bought Legendee.com but did not buy Legendee.com.vn and Legendee.vn is also quite confusing, if it wants to develop domestically. Remember, there was information saying that HSBC when entering Vietnam
"Regarding the domain name legendeecoffee.com, which is owned by an individual who does not own the brand but owns a domain name character string that is identical to Trung Nguyen's brand, we must see if Legendee cofee has been registered for global protection. If it has been registered, then if Legendeecoffee.com puts up any other coffee brand, Trung Nguyen has the right to file a lawsuit with WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) to take back Legendeecoffee.com unconditionally, of course with a not small fee that can be up to 20,000 USD," Mr. Tuan Anh added.
Vietnamese businesses still haven't learned the "big lesson"?
In early January 2012, Bkav announced that it would buy back the domain name bkav.com for 2 billion VND, a very expensive price compared to spending 10 USD (about 200,000 VND) to buy bkav.com when no one had registered it since 2001. According to a leader of Bkav, the company had previously spent more than 2 years negotiating to buy back this domain name and the partner "did not reduce a penny".
Bkav is not the only victim of being slow, many famous corporations and companies in Vietnam such as FPT, Viettel, Vinaphone, Mobifone and Vietcombank have lost their dot com (.com) domain names. And if they want to buy them back, the price that the partners set is not small, sometimes reaching an... unimaginable number.
In 2010, a scandal broke out between Trung Nguyen Coffee and Highlands Coffee of Viet Thai International Joint Stock Company (VTI), when the domain name trungnguyen.com.au (Australia's national domain name) was used to promote Highlands Coffee. Trung Nguyen claimed that,
In fact, it is quite common for a domain name owner to intentionally embed content that affects the reputation of the brand owner, in order to "force" the brand owner to spend money to buy back the domain name related to it.
Before the 2010 incident, Trung Nguyen had learned a lesson from the fact that a foreign company had registered the intellectual property of the Trung Nguyen coffee name and logo with WIPO in the US market. Trung Nguyen then had to work very hard and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get this domain name back.
Querying information from domain name provider Gltec, the individual who registered the domain name legendeecoffee.com is Nguyen Trong Khoa - this person claims to own more than 500 international brand domain names of Vietnam.
When provided with information about the domain name legendeecoffee.com being registered by an individual not under the control of Trung Nguyen, Mr. Dang Le Nguyen Vu requested to transfer the information to Trung Nguyen's professional department and will respond soon.
Currently, Trung Nguyen only owns the domain name legendee.com, while another individual who owns the domain names legendee.com.vn and legendee.vn said: Simply, he is too surprised with Trung Nguyen's abandonment of these two domain names, will give them back to Trung Nguyen if Trung Nguyen wants and hopes that Trung Nguyen will pay more attention to building the Vietnamese coffee brand in the domestic and international markets./.
According to VTC News
