NEW GTLDS
bad actors, possibly for up to 90 days, grinds to a halt. Claims plus is essentially an extended warning system but it will stay open for at least five years aſter a registry opens. Donuts expects the service to cost nothing or very little.
“MANY VIEW THE CLEARINGHOUSE AS A SOLUTION TO A PROBLEM—BUT IT IS ONLY A MECHANISM FOR PARTICIPATING IN SUNRISES OR IN EXTENDED CLAIMS.”
Anderson is happy that Donuts will send cybersquatting warnings for five years, adding that its extended programme will apply to half of all the open gTLDs on the Internet (if Donuts runs all 307 registries).
But while the service might help to mitigate cybersquatting to a degree, some fear that sending warnings will not have a significant deterrent effect on bad actors, not actually stopping them from registering trademarked domains.
“Donuts’ claims plus is an extension of the claims service under the Trademark Clearinghouse, and you have to look at what the Clearinghouse is—it’s nothing more than a database that sends warnings to two independent parties. Te Clearinghouse is not going to stop cybersquatting—it’s going to alert you to the fact that it is happening much more quickly than conventional means would,” Anderson says.
Winterfeldt notes: “Given that in their current form, the mechanisms proposed by Donuts and Minds + Machines are likely not enforceable by ICANN, I would advise brand owners to be wary of relying on them unless Donuts and Minds + Machines choose to commit to a Public Interest Commitment (PIC) specification, which locks the mechanisms as contractual obligations.”
Donuts' second prominent RPM is the ‘claims plus’ service, which will send warnings to registrars whose customers try to register a domain incorporating a Clearinghouse mark. Te service will start running once the Clearinghouse’s own claims service, which sends warnings to suspected
“Many view the Clearinghouse as a solution to a problem—but it is only a mechanism for participating in sunrises or in extended claims. It should never be used as a rights protection. Tere is still a lot of confusion about what the Clearinghouse actually does, so it is hard to understand what benefit IP owners gain from it. If you want to participate in sunrise launches, then you should register in the Clearinghouse. If you don’t, there are cheaper and more effective ways to monitor trademark infringement online,” he adds.
Dispute resolution
Given this general uncertainty about blocking and warning systems, Minds + Machines’
proposed dispute resolution might bring better news for brand owners. The system will join the current Uniform Domain-Name Dispute- Resolution Policy (UDRP) and the pending Uniform Rapid Suspension Policy (URS), allowing a mark holder to file a complaint with an ombudsman, who will assess it for free. The ombudsman will then make a ruling and if the parties agree with it then Minds + Machines will implement it. If they disagree, the parties can move on to use the UDRP, URS or the court system.
“This has been used very successfully in the country-code TLD space and I am excited to see it implemented in the gTLD space,” says Pruis. “People always probe the system for what’s going to be allowed [cybersquatting]. Our approach is to take care of that immediately— we won’t wait until there’s a UDRP ruling and we have very aggressive policies to deal with names that violate our policies. When you act swiftly and strictly, people move on to try somewhere else.”
Radix is another company that has applied for more than a handful of gTLDs. Owned by Indian web company Directi, the firm has 31 applications, one of which is for the highly contested .web domain, which many believe will be very popular with consumers.
Aman Masjide, manager of compliance and abuse mitigation at Directi, says the firm is still brainstorming ideas about which extra RPMs to implement but, like companies such as Donuts and Minds + Machines, it is committed to removing repeat cybersquatters from the system.
“Tis will require a lot of automation and analysis within the existing portfolio at
level. As a registrar we have more than a million the registrar
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Trademarks Brands and the Internet Volume 2, Issue 1
www.worldipreview.com
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