IP CONSTITUENCY
In the rush to launch new gTLDs, many feel that IP concerns have been marginalised, but now’s the time to rally round, says Jonathan Cohen.
charged with advising the board of directors on policy issues relating to the management of the domain name system. Te IPC consists of a dozen or so active members, the core of whom carry a continuing, and heavy, burden of trying to make known to the board and the ICANN communities the position and concerns of brand owners and IP practitioners. Many have been doing this since 1998 when ICANN started, and have put in many thousands of hours that are unpaid, and unsung.
Te IPC’s struggle to represent brand owners in light of the new unlimited gTLD world has gone largely unnoticed. In the new gTLD saga, it is oſten overlooked that it was at the request of the IPC that the board created the Implementation
www.worldipreview.com
Recommendation Team (IRT), a group of real experts combining both long experience in trademark and domain name law and experience of
the workings of practitioners also
from each of the non-commercial, registrar and registry
of some assistance, were ‘watered down’ and fall short of those recommended by the IRT and advocated by the IPC.
ICANN. Tis group of included a representative
constituencies to provide necessary
information and balance to the IRT’s proposals. Tey were from many countries around the world and volunteered a great deal of
their
time before proposing a set of inter-dependent balanced rights protection mechanisms (RPMs) and safeguards for brand owners in this new gTLD environment.
Despite the best efforts of the IPC, however, the RPMs finally adopted by ICANN, while clearly
As a result, brand owners may be forced to take defensive positions, including creating a stable of unwanted domain name registrations which, even in today’s gTLD world, may number in the tens of thousands.
While the IPC has vigorously defended the position of brand owners, the vast majority of those who need protecting either were unaware of the new gTLD initiative and associated risks, or chose not to get involved in the discussion until it was too late, despite the seriousness of the issue. Tis could be because it has never really
Trademarks Brands and the Internet Volume 1, Issue 2 27
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