A report released tonight by Minds+Machines, (pdf) predicts that the proposed gTLD’s will only cause 316 new cases of CyberSquatting and that the cost to trademark holders worldwide will be “less than $.10”.
How does the authors of the report come to that conclusion?
They look at the percentage of UDRP cases coming from .com’s, .net and .org against those in the “new” extensions, .info, .biz, .mobi, .asia and .tel.
The report does not account for the number of UDRP’s involving ccTLD’s including .Me which since its recent release has been subject to many cases.
Moreover without limiting the number of new gTLD extensions there is no way to even begin to predict the number of CyberSqautting Cases.
On the panel I sat in last week, predictions for number of new gTLD’s extension for the 1st year ranged from 100-1,500.
Before you dismiss the prediction of 1,500 new gTLD’s that was made by the member of the panel that sits on the ICANN committee for the new gTLD’s.
If the number of new extensions are so unpredictable then the number of cases coming from them are impossible to predict.
If there were only 300 new extensions that means there would only be 1 UDRP per extension?
Even .tel has had 5 UDRP by the author’s count.
If each new extension only got 5 UDRP’s and the upper end of the range of new gTLD’s predicted by the panel were reached, your looking at 7,500 new cases.
I understand the authors are trying to combat trademark groups warnings of a flood of new cybersqautting cases if the new gTLD’s are released but I don’t think this report is going to convince many that hundreds or thousands of new extensions are going to result in a minimal amount of new cases.
Trying to cost average of what the authors call a $5,000 cost for a UDRP, (or even a lower cost if the URS is adopted) amongst every trademark throughout the world or the US is just silly.
If you have to pursue one of these its going to cost you a few thousand per case.
What that $5K averages down to amongst every trademark is pretty irrelevant to those writing the checks, because no one is going to be writing a check for 10 cents.
The report also fails to mention how many C & D letters are sent out by trademark holders or the costs thereof, which result in a domain being transferred without a UDRP or the number of court cases filed by trademark holders or the costs involved with those.
In football this is known as a Hail Mary pass.
Nobody will register typos which has no traffic and revenue
DUH
good now WIPO can hire a bigger team of non domainers to handle cases that have no clue on……
with all the money in u.s. domain wipos for these new tlds it should fill up the u.s. treasury.
Stuff like this is silly. Do you think anyone who read this report took it seriously? Honestly? Or maybe I give people too much credit for intelligence. I feel that writing this report has to be counterproductive to Mind Machines cause. They just lost more credibility i thik. Would have been a better report to release on April Fools.
They did lose credibility. A somewhat pathetic argument given how self-serving and weak it is. It’s not just the UDRP costs & Federal court costs, it’s untold work hours & corporate resources monitoring, responding, and tracking multiple ongoing attempts at TM exploitation worldwide. This M+M “report” is what is referred to as intellectual dishonesty in that any reasonable person will arrive at the inevitable conclusion that unlimited new tld’s pose a much, much greater problem for global corporations trying to squelch TM infringement and protect their intellectual property.
Yet he comes up with a conveniently small number, exact number at that, based on rubbing two sticks together. In an attempt to trivialize concerns of the majority.
The report sounds like rhetortic & propaganda. Sad.
UDRPlaw.net validated Minds and Machines analyses and confirmed that the study is correct:
http://www.udrplaw.net/udrp/governance/icann/new_tlds/brands-and-newtlds-and-udrp.html
Go new TLDs!
L.F.
Not sure they “validated” the report.
They noted it and the findings but they made no attempt to determine if the numbers bear out which they clearly don’t.
If there are only 300 new gTLD’s and the lowest new gTLD they cited in the report. .tel had 5 UDRP how do they come to the conclusion there will only be on average 1 UDRP?
Conclusions are statistically faulty
Just because parties don’t take legal action doesn’t mean cybersquatting isn’t taking place and/or it isn’t a problem for TM holders. Their analysis is just silly. What they need to say is– ” Who in their right mind would visit a site with TLDs as ridiculous as we are proposing? They don’t even go to these established ones (.info, .biz, .mobi, .asia and .tel) so TM holders need not worry….our investors do!”
The report is flawed because it disregards a very important psychological factor about cybersquatters. Many cybersquatters go straight for a name that appears attractive and I believe many of these gTLDs will prove irresistable to them in a way with no precedent. Let’s take dotSports or dotMusic as an example. Many cybersquatters will buy any player’s name with dotSport and any artist’s name with dotMusic because, in their mind, they emotionally believe it will have value in the aftermarket. Of course, the potential owners of these TLDs will say now that they will keep a short leash on these names, but one has to look no further than dotTravel to see what will happen. In the beginning, dotTravel was very strict about who registered a name, but when the money didn’t show they opened the gates.
Well, they don’t call them Mind + Machinations for nothing.
What appears to not be mentioned is the cost to Trade Mark holders who are not large international corporations.
Sure, $5000.00 a crack may not be a lot to a big international corporation like Microsoft, but what about the small business owners? They’re the ones who are truly injured by cybersquatters.
The more TLDs and gTLDs put out, the more money a Trade Mark holder must spend to protect his or her Mark.
The biggest problem here is that Trade Marks are available to the general public, and the database is free to access. It is not difficult to determine if the purchaser of a domain is the rightful holder of a mark or not. Companies that sell TLDs should be required to flag all domains that relate to a Mark. Those domains should be automatically reserved for the Mark holders use alone, and any attempt to violate that legal right should be punished with time spent in jail.
Anyone who has a Trade Mark spent good hard money to register that Mark with their Government. That money spent, comes with legal standing.
Can an individual take your automobile that you purchased with your hard earned cash without going to jail for it? Certainly, if they are caught, they will be prosecuted and sent to jail. Why is it then, that a Trade Mark is not considered property the same way? One does register a Trade Mark with a Governing authority. One must send the Governing authority money in order to register said Trade Mark. That is just as much a legal purchase as the purchase of an automobile, or a television, or a microwave that a thief can take after breaking in. If those items are valuable enough to prosecute a thief and put them in jail for their crime, then to should be the punishment of those who violate the rights of Trade Mark holders.
Scott
US trademarks on available online but other countries are not so easy to find.
There are also a ton of issues regarding generic terms that are trademarked which are not unique or famous and those that come after the domain was registered in the first place.
Trademarks are granted by governments by classes not universally so you can and there are trademarks for the same exact term among different classes and uses so its nothing like title to a piece of real estate or in your example a car
Seems to me that the price of a new Gtld would detere the most common cybersquatters.
They would have to re-work their structure, along with companies (because what private person can afford a GTLD) using the web differently.
When thinking about the money earned from cybersquating now, it is only enabled by the relative low price of domain names.