The ICANN Public Comment process can be severely frustrating and unsatisfying, as proven once again by ICANN’s September 30th  publication of final Rights Protection Mechanisms (RPMs) for new gTLD registries[1], just twelve days after the September 18th deadline for submitting written comments. The final RPMs include a completely unchanged Trademark Notice that fails to meet ICANN’s stated goal that “The …

ICANN’s Business Constituency (BC) has sent a letter[1] to ICANN’s CEO and Board Chairman expressing multiple concerns about the “UDRP Providers and Uniformity of Process – Status Report” issued by ICANN on July 19th, the day after the mid-year meeting in Durban concluded. The Report was issued without advance notice or opportunity for comment, and takes a strong position against …

I generally write these posts in the third person because I am speaking for the ICA’s membership. But today I’m going to depart from that style and speak personally. Yesterday I received word that my application to become a member of the Internet Committee of the International Trademark Association had been approved, and that my two-year term will commence in …

  Using the impending launch of new gTLDs as a rationale, The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA) has teamed up with the Council of Better Business Bureaus (BBB) to launch a month-long “‘Know Your Net’ gTLD public awareness campaign”[1]. Their goal is to enact amendments to the U.S. Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) that would expand the law’s coverage …

ICA has just submitted its comments (http://forum.icann.org/lists/comments-rpm-requirements-06aug13/msg00057.html) to ICANN regarding Rights Protection Mechanism (RPM) Requirements at new gTLDs. Our comments focus on serious shortcomings in the current text of the Trademark Notice (TN) that will be generated by some attempted domain registrations. Once a prospective registrant receives a TN it completes the domain registration at its own risk, with an …

During its August 22nd meeting the ICANN Board approved renewal of the registry agreements for the incumbent .Biz, .Info, and .Org gTLD registries. All three contracts were adopted in the identical form to the drafts published for public comment earlier this year[1]. In taking that action the Board did not adopt the suggestion of ICANN’s Intellectual Property Constituency (IPC) that …

ICANN’s Board meets today, and included on its Consent Agenda is approval of the revised registry contracts for .Biz, .Info, and .Org. ICA saw nothing in the proposed revisions to warrant comment – until we recently became aware that the Intellectual Property Constituency (IPC) had made the immodest suggestion that all three agreements be amended to require the adoption of …

  There’s an old joke that only two economists in the entire world actually know what they are talking about – and that they disagree! Apparently something similar holds true for ICANN string confusion experts. Except rather than being asked to prescribe the best policy mix or project the future performance of highly complex economic systems, they are simply being …

The Legal Rights Objection (LRO) mechanism administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on behalf of ICANN is starting to look like the reverse FISA Court of domain name system (DNS) rights protection mechanisms (RPMs) at the top level. In FISA Court, the government always wins – at WIPO, the LRO complainant always loses. The FISA Court is of …

On July 18th the Senate Appropriations Committee issued Report 113–78 on S. 1329, the “DEPARTMENTS OF COMMERCE AND JUSTICE, AND SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS BILL, 2014”. The Report contains language that is harshly critical of the role played by the National Telecommunications and Information Agency (NTIA) within ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), and would require NTIA to report back …