[Ecommerce] ICANN resolution on famous names

[James Love]

Things are moving quite fast in the ICANN process for rules on new top
level domains (TLDs), and if TACD wants to have imput, it should have a
resolution to the ICANN names council before April 17, to influence the
Names Council report, and as early as April 10 if possible.  Something
later is also possible, but several decision making steps will have been
missed.

TACD already has a resolution on ICANN that says:

http://www.tacd.org/ecommercef.html#icann

  It is the view of TACD that ICANN's mission should be 
   limited so that it does not become a general purpose 
   Internet governance organization.

ICANN is now proposing a big new proposal for "famous" trademarks that
goes way beyond any country's national laws on trademarks.  This will
not benefit any TACD members, because it is designed for trademarks that
a "famous" is dozens of countries -- primarily for trademarks like
cocacola, nike, etc.  Smaller concerns and regular trademark owners will
have the ICANN  "Uniform Domain-Name 
Dispute-Resolution Policy" (UDRP) program for trademark protection.

   http://www.icann.org/udrp/udrp.htm

The famous names proposal is new and different, and only for "famous"
marks, ironically, the ones owned by the biggest companies, that can
best afford to defend trademark rights.  

My proposed resolution, which was posted to tacd on March 23, 2000, is
on the web here:

http://www.tacd.org/working_groups/icann.html


I would be happy to change it in response to any comments. So far only
Jean Ann Fox has commented.  

Jamie




                    Domains and famous names

                    version 1.0 
                    author: James Love, love@cptech.org 
                    March 23, 2000 

                    ICANN is considering the creation of new top level
domains (TLDs)for t he Internet. These will include both commercial and
non-commercial TLDs. There are proposals to create a number of new
non-commercial TLDs that would provide opportunities to organize
consumers or workers for a particular business or product, or for
criticism. Examples of these would include such proposals as .customers,
.union, .ecology or .opinion, to mention only a few.

                    ICANN has asked its "Working Group B" to consider
the impact of new TLDs on trademark rights. Trademark owners have asked
ICANN to request a list of "famous" names from the World Intellectual
Property Organization (WIPO). Further, trademark owners are asking ICANN
to provide trademark owners certain rights to exclude others from using
the famous names in the new TLD space.

                      1.TACD recommends that ICANN not place new
restrictions on the ability to register a domain.

                      2.TACD recommends that ICANN not adjudicate
disputes over trademark rights. This is outside the scope of ICANN's
mission.

                      3.TACD recognizes that courts may impose various
restrictions on the uses of trademarks in domain names, via court
orders, and that conflicts may exist in national laws. However, ICANN
should not become a global policy making body for trademark rights.

                      4.TACD recommends that legal authorities on
trademark disputes acknowledge the legitimacy of the use of a company or
product name in connection with a TLD that is designed to facilitate
organization of consumers or workers, or for criticism. For example:
boeing.union, volvo.union, fiat.customers, Texaco.ecology or
cocacola.isnotfair, could be registered by persons without the
permission of the company that owned the product.

=======================================================
James Love, Director           | http://www.cptech.org
Consumer Project on Technology | mailto:love@cptech.org 
P.O. Box 19367                 | voice: 1.202.387.8030
Washington, DC 20036           | fax:   1.202.234.5176
=======================================================