- Joined
- May 17, 2002
- Messages
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The IRT final report was published on the ICANN website a few hours ago. It is basically a wish-list for TM holders, and could be used by overreaching TM lawyers to attack valuable domain names owned by legitimate good faith registrants.
http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-4-29may09-en.htm
(new comments at http://forum.icann.org/lists/irt-final-report and old ones can be seen at http://forum.icann.org/lists/irt-draft-report/ )
Here's a copy of our initial comments on this final report:
----- start of comments ----------
I was holding out hope that the IRT would actually take into account the public comments of the non-IP world and create a balanced report. We made extensive comments in good faith that reflected the needs of responsible registrants:
http://forum.icann.org/lists/irt-draft-report/msg00000.html
http://forum.icann.org/lists/irt-draft-report/msg00015.html
http://forum.icann.org/lists/irt-draft-report/msg00016.html
(the 3rd link in particular discussed a novel approach that would protect ALL registrants from new gTLD confusion at the top level in an elegant manner, and was superior to the rehash of old ideas produced by the IRT)
I just finished reading the final report and frankly it is an abomination, showing total disregard for balanced solutions that protect the rights of legitimate registrants. Trademark trolls who wish to reverse hijack valuable domain names would be cheering at this report, if it was implemented without significant changes.
The URS in particular is an extremist view of trademark rights, tilted in favour of IP interests compared to the UDRP and beyond what is protected or recognized by law and due process. It also obfuscates the dual requirement of BOTH bad faith use AND registration (there are lots of inconsistencies in the language that seek to weaken the standard to make it "OR" instead of "AND"). The level of defaults will be even higher than the UDRP simply because good faith registrants never receive actual notice of complaints. Even faxes were considered too expensive! A 1 page fax, using email-to-fax technology (so it can easily be automated by the URS provider) would cost less than $1 ANYWHERE in the world! The IRT team should try sending registered letters in a statistically valid sample size and measure how long it takes them to be delivered to different parts of the world -- it can be more than a week, even from the USA to Canada, let alone from Europe to Canada. And the URS was said to be a "higher burden" than the UDRP, yet no consideration was given to the creation date of the domain name! Restricting the URS to recently registered domains would have demonstrated that the IRT was showing balance, i.e. only wanting to cover "clear cut" cases of abuse. Frankly, the IRT team is demonstrating that their tactics and extreme positions can be even worse than those of the cybersquatters that they decry and detest.
I will do a detailed deconstruction of the final report in the coming weeks (there are more pressing comments required by the NTIA first), however simply re-read the comments that I and others submitted previously. They were completely ignored.
-------- end of comments -----
I encourage all to read the report, and to submit comments.
http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-4-29may09-en.htm
(new comments at http://forum.icann.org/lists/irt-final-report and old ones can be seen at http://forum.icann.org/lists/irt-draft-report/ )
Here's a copy of our initial comments on this final report:
----- start of comments ----------
I was holding out hope that the IRT would actually take into account the public comments of the non-IP world and create a balanced report. We made extensive comments in good faith that reflected the needs of responsible registrants:
http://forum.icann.org/lists/irt-draft-report/msg00000.html
http://forum.icann.org/lists/irt-draft-report/msg00015.html
http://forum.icann.org/lists/irt-draft-report/msg00016.html
(the 3rd link in particular discussed a novel approach that would protect ALL registrants from new gTLD confusion at the top level in an elegant manner, and was superior to the rehash of old ideas produced by the IRT)
I just finished reading the final report and frankly it is an abomination, showing total disregard for balanced solutions that protect the rights of legitimate registrants. Trademark trolls who wish to reverse hijack valuable domain names would be cheering at this report, if it was implemented without significant changes.
The URS in particular is an extremist view of trademark rights, tilted in favour of IP interests compared to the UDRP and beyond what is protected or recognized by law and due process. It also obfuscates the dual requirement of BOTH bad faith use AND registration (there are lots of inconsistencies in the language that seek to weaken the standard to make it "OR" instead of "AND"). The level of defaults will be even higher than the UDRP simply because good faith registrants never receive actual notice of complaints. Even faxes were considered too expensive! A 1 page fax, using email-to-fax technology (so it can easily be automated by the URS provider) would cost less than $1 ANYWHERE in the world! The IRT team should try sending registered letters in a statistically valid sample size and measure how long it takes them to be delivered to different parts of the world -- it can be more than a week, even from the USA to Canada, let alone from Europe to Canada. And the URS was said to be a "higher burden" than the UDRP, yet no consideration was given to the creation date of the domain name! Restricting the URS to recently registered domains would have demonstrated that the IRT was showing balance, i.e. only wanting to cover "clear cut" cases of abuse. Frankly, the IRT team is demonstrating that their tactics and extreme positions can be even worse than those of the cybersquatters that they decry and detest.
I will do a detailed deconstruction of the final report in the coming weeks (there are more pressing comments required by the NTIA first), however simply re-read the comments that I and others submitted previously. They were completely ignored.
-------- end of comments -----
I encourage all to read the report, and to submit comments.
