As Kevin Murphy chatted about on Domainincite.com today, a letter sent by the chair of the Government Advisory Council (GAC) Heather Dryden who happens to be the representative from Canada, to the ICANN board makes it clear that the GAC still has major issues with ICANN over the new gTLD program.
One of the lingering issues The GAC has is “competition concerns in particualr those resulting from changes to the registry-registrar cross ownership rules.”
Mr. Strickling as demanded on many occasions that ICANN explain the sudden change of policy which to my knowledge they have never done.
The second point raised by the letter from the GAC is that they want Trademark (TM) interests to be protected even if the TM has not been in use.
We are against this policy and stand with ICANN that TM interests should only be possible eligible for protection is the trademark is in use, not just a planned or future use.
Finally the GAC wants removed from the Guidebook exactly what they demand from ICANN which is explanation and detail on decisions.
In the current Guidebook the GAC is required to give an early warning if they might object to an application for a particular string “contain particular information or take a particular form”. The GAC doesn’t like that.
The GAC seems to just want to be able to object to a particular string with no explanation and without any other obligation.
So the GAC wants for its self what its telling ICANN doesn’t work for them, more transparency and more explanation.
Since the ICANN board is scheduled to vote on the new gTLD program Monday morning local time, this meeting which will be held this afternoon Sunday at 4pm local time may well determine if the new gTLD’s get approved.
We will be that session in person and will be reporting live.
Let the suspense begins…but please do not lose sleep over it.
so what is the deal with “no use” tm’s in europe?
are these just defensive registrations to block the competition from registering them? pardon my ignorance.
if they’re not using the mark, then how would a similar domain name be harmful?
because it might tarnish the reputation of the mark online? and they could suffer when they begin using the mark later?
they certainly can’t claim a domain name registrant is benefiting on their marketing efforts, or confusing consumers, if the mark is not being used.
if you see GAC’s trademark lawyers fail to give any explanantion on why they need this, then you can probably assume there isn’t any.
QB
There are countries which do not require use before issuing a trademark.
Of course the trademark system can be gamed & used by “trademark” holders to get unfair advantage to domain names.
Trademarks are a legal right, the legality of which should and is decided by the country in which they are issued, used or not used is not important to the registration in many countries because that is what their law says. ICANN has no right to make some TMs more important than others. IP is IP and should be respected as such.
Rob
ICANN is not going to make certain TM more important all TM from where ever country they are issued are going to have to meet the same standard.
Lets remember the .EU launch disaster where one registrant based off of “trademarks” gamed the system to grab 70,000 domains.
You can follow the discussion on Twitter, very active right now
Twitter.com/berkens
usually laws are passed for a reason. let’s here from the experts.
why does a country have a law that allows tm’s that are never used to be protected? what does this achieve?
there must be a reason.
and once we know why, we can ask should this apply to domain names?
so far, no reasoning has been presented in the documents posted online. instead the argument we’ve seen is that icann policy should account for the laws of countries besides the one where icann is domiciled. that’s entirely reasonable. though the unilateral nature of icann may be an ongoing point of controversy, it is not one of the issues they’re trying to resolve in these meetings. given the multitude of issues surrounding icann, it might be wise to resolve one issue at a time. and start with the small ones.
the issue before them is whether a party should be able to take over a domain name based solely on successfully registering a tm in any country. if the answer is yes, then why?
icann’s reason has presented it’s reason why not to allow this. their reason is not “because the trademark law of countryA requires use”. rather, it relates to the registration system for domain names and the effect that requiring/not requiring use may have. when a trademark is in use, everyone can see it. it can be verified easily. that benefits the registration process.
but the gac gives as its reason “because the trademark law of countryB does not require use”? so how does this affect the system for domain names?
icann policy != trademark law of any country
it’s just a policy, issued by a private corporation. and that corporation is only concerned with the implementation of high frequency domain name registration, not differences in trademark laws.
gac just continues to approach this the wrong way, imo.
Even today for ICANNs new gTLDs the whole of ICANN’s sunrise proposals need a substantive rethink. http://bit.ly/jIRtJ1