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Governments to take trademark concerns to ICANN

Kevin Murphy, January 24, 2011, 18:19:13 (UTC), Domain Registries

ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee will head to Brussels next month determined to persuade ICANN to strengthen the trademark protections in its new top-level domains program.
The GAC is set to take many of the concerns of the trademark lobby to its meeting with ICANN’s board of directors, UK GAC representative Mark Carvell said in an interview today.
“It’s very important that the interests of trademark holders are fully respected and that the costs that might flow to them are mitigated as much as possible,” he said.
“Their interests should not be undermined in any way that creates unnecessary burdens for them – it interferes with trade, business development and so on.”
The GAC is currently working on 12 “scorecards” that enumerate its concerns with the Applicant Guidebook for new TLDs, as well as more “overarching” issues with the program.
Carvell has been charged with writing the scorecard on trademark protection. He recently met with several large brand interests in London, as World Trademark Review reported last week.
I get the impression that the GAC’s position will be less hard-line than some of the IP lawyers WTR quoted, who want a wholesale return to their proposals of two years ago.
One protection the IP lobby wants restored to the Guidebook is the Globally Protected Marks List, which would take a lot of the cost out of defensive registrations in new TLDs.
The GPML was proposed by brand holders, but did not make it into the current version of the Guidebook.
“Whether we can simply go back to that, I doubt, but we may discuss it,” Carvell said. “I’d be hesitant to simply revert to a set of proposals that did not get full support.”
He added that protections granted in the launches of .eu and .co – which had a Specially Protected Marks List similar to the GPML – could also provide the basis for discussion.
Another protection, the Uniform Rapid Suspension policy, designed to allow trademark holders to quickly block blatant cases of cybersquatting, has been watered down quite a lot since its first iteration.
“The URS does not achieve its original objectives,” Carvell said. The GAC will push for it to be strengthened, not fundamentally revisited, he said.
“We don’t want the Trademark Clearinghouse completely remodeled, we’re not looking for the URS to be totally reshaped, we want to work with ICANN to improve these mechanisms,” he said.
The two-day Brussels meeting, scheduled for February 28, will not all be about trademarks, of course. Other issues include geographical name protection and the treatment of “controversial” strings.
There’s a feeling in some parts of the GAC that TLDs deemed so controversial they they are likely to be blocked by certain nations (think .sex, .gay etc) should be given an “early warning” dissuading them from continuing with their applications.
Unsurprisingly (given its role in overseeing the DNS root) but ironically (given its First Amendment) it is the US GAC representative who has been assigned work on this particular scorecard.
It seems to me that the list of concerns the GAC will take to Brussels is going to be quite substantial. We’re likely not talking about only minor edits to the Guidebook.
While ICANN may feel under some pressure to officially launch the new TLDs program at the close of its splashy San Francisco meeting in March, it’s my growing feeling that this may not be realistic.
If the GAC gets even half of what it intends to ask for, ICANN’s rules could well call for another public comment period before it can sign off on the Applicant Guidebook.
Carvell said that the GAC is very sensitive to the concerns of applicants, eager to launch their TLDs, saying the GAC has been placed “in a very unfortunate position”.
“Nobody wants this to go beyond San Francisco,” he said. “One would hope not, but we can’t rule out that possibility.”
He suggested that some of the GAC’s issues could be deferred in the interests of timing.
Trademark and geographic string protections refer directly to the content of the Guidebook, but other issues, such as economic analysis and supporting applications from developing countries, do not.
“It may be that some of these issues could be further explored and discussed in parallel with the launch,” he said, noting that there’s a four-month buffer period envisioned between the approval of the Guidebook and the opening of the first round of applications.

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Comments (5)

  1. Richard Tindal says:
    January 25, 2011 at 7:40 pm

    Well researched article Kevin. I think the concessions that will be made to the GAC will be more tactical in nature – largely efficiency (and some effectiveness) improvements to the URS and PDDRP.
    It’s hard to see a single GPML being approved. Even Government agencies recognize the nightmare that would flow from trying to agree on one, global list. Add to this the very limited protections the GPML would provide (it does little more than the existing Sunrise and Top Level objection processes) and I think GPML is hard to justify.

    Reply
  2. Alexander Schubert says:
    January 26, 2011 at 5:33 pm

    “I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.” — Thomas Jefferson
    “There’s a feeling in some parts of the GAC that TLDs deemed so controversial they they are likely to be blocked by certain nations (think .sex, .gay etc) should be given an “early warning” dissuading them from continuing with their applications.”
    The United States just embraced LGBT people in their ARMY. And now we help a tiny minority of countries keeping “.gay” out of the root? Really? Because some countries think, it’s “controversial”?
    Think about it: “TelAviv” is also very “controversial” for several countries. Do we now help them to keep “.TelAviv” out of the root, too? I don’t think so. And “.democracy”?
    Alexander Schubert

    Reply
  3. ICANN sets March deadline for new TLDs | DomainIncite.com - Domain Name News & Opinion says:
    January 28, 2011 at 8:26 am

    […] Governments to take trademark concerns to ICANN […]

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    February 1, 2011 at 12:16 pm

    […] Governments to take trademark concerns to ICANN […]

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