Afnic the organization that manages the ccTLD’s of .fr ( (France), .re (Reunion Island), .yt (Mayotte), .wf (Wallis and Futuna), .tf (French Southern Territories), .pm (Saint-Pierre and Miquelon) is launching a public consultation about setting up an alternative dispute resolution procedure, in conjunction with WIPO and has opened up the topic for comment.
“As part of its assignment to provide a dispute resolution system that is accessible and balanced for right holders and holders of domain names, Afnic wants to set up an additional procedure based on the Arbitration and Mediation Center of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO Center).”
“Afnic already has an internal procedure for dispute resolution called SYRELI. ”
“The new procedure, which is designed to provide an additional means of redress for claimants, enabling arbitration decisions to be handed down based on independent experts.”
“Since a domain name is inherently unique in a given namespace (such as the .fr TLD), it is possible that several people may feel justified in claiming different rights on the same domain name (intellectual property rights, copyright, personality rights, trade name, etc.).”
“In addition, practices such as cybersquatting, typosquatting or parking pages divert Internet users from the sites they are looking for and generate profit from this traffic to the detriment of the holders of the domain names that are pirated as a result.”
“At the request of the French government and to assist in resolving these disputes when they involve the namespace managed by Afnic, the Dispute Resolution System managed by Afnic (SYRELI) was opened on November 21, 2011.”
“Between now and the end of 2013, Afnic will stop the suspension period of the current WIPO ADR and will be opening up a further extra-judicial dispute resolution way: an alternative procedure for resolving disputes submitted to experts appointed by the Arbitration and Mediation Center of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO Center).”
To this end, Afnic is opening the project to public consultation for 22 days From Monday March 11 to Tuesday April 2, 2013 at midnight.
You are cordially invited to review the project and the current state of work on it here before sending us your comments, observations and suggestions via the feedback form to consultation-publique-1@afnic.fr
