ICA Counsel Philip Corwin has been invited to speak at an all-day conference being convened by ICANN’s Noncommercial Users Constituency (NCUC) on Friday, October 12th. The event will take place at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel one day in advance of opening policy discussions at ICANN’s upcoming 45th public meeting in Toronto. The NCUC is the home for civil society …

On October 3rd, at 1500 UTC, ICANN will hold a publicly accessible webinar on the further development of the Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) rights protection mechanism (RPM) for new gTLDs. The announcement of the webinar can be found at http://www.icann.org/en/news/announcements/announcement-6-24sep12-en.htm; those wishing to participate should send an e-mail to newgtldcommunications@icann.org to obtain call-in and web access details. URS is the …

  On September 24th ICANN issued a Request for Information (RFI) to solicit bids from potential Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) providers. The announcement can be found at http://www.icann.org/en/news/announcements/announcement-8-24sep12-en.htm and a link is provided to the RFI itself. Qualified arbitration providers have until November 20th to submit a response, and ICANN hopes to publish a list of selected providers by February …

Is it really less than a week ago that Melbourne IT (MIT) hosted a Washington, DC forum on “Trademarks and New gTLDs”? The calendar says that it was, but intervening events make the discussion that took place feel outdated already — given that the one item on which there was clear consensus among almost all event participants (ICANN moving forward …

For more than a year ICA has been asking ICANN when it will commence with the task of implementing the Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) policy for the new gTLD program as it currently stands in the Applicant Guidebook (AG). The URS is a required rights protection mechanism (RPM) that must be in place before any new gTLDs can open, and …

On the afternoon of Wednesday, September 5th ICA attended a meeting on rights protection mechanisms (RPMs) for new gTLDs held at the U.S. Department of Commerce in Washington. About 40 persons attended in person, with another half dozen connected by phone, and almost all of them were from law firms, trade associations, corporations, and consultancies representing major brand interests. ICA …

On August 30th three members of the U.S. House of Representatives sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano raising questions about the legality and methodology of the Operations In Our Sites domain seizure program jointly launched by those Cabinet Departments in November 2010. The letter (available at http://lofgren.house.gov/images/Letter_to_AG_Holder_083012.pdf ) was signed by …

Melbourne IT’s involvement with ICANN dates back to 1999, when ICANN awarded it one of the first five registrar licenses to compete with the then-monopoly of Network Solutions Inc. in registering domain names under .com, .net and .org. It remains in the top tier of Internet registrars today, with 4.5 million domains under management. It is also involved with several …

ICANN has posted a “tentative roadmap” for the future direction of the new gTLD program. It is available at http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/announcements-and-media/announcement-17aug12-en . This August 17th notice explains that, now that pre-evaluation “batching” has been ruled out, the technical limit of adding a maximum of 1,000 domains per year will require the selection of a pre-delegation “metering” process. The notice provides six …

ICANN’s policy and decision making process is supposedly based upon a bottom up, community consensus model. While we are all for careful deliberation before major policies are adopted and implementing actions are taken, we cannot support endless process for its own sake – especially when no concrete action ever results. ICA has just filed a comment letter regarding the July …