ICA Blog

ICANN’s institutional memory seems to be slipping, and that concerns us. On March 20th, ICANN announced that trademark owners would not only be able to register their marks meeting certain validation criteria in the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMC) but also up to fifty variations of each mark that had been found to be the subject of abusive registrations in a UDRP …

Domain registrants won’t be receiving UDRP notices from Amman, Jordan for at least a while. Last week ICA sent a letter to ICANN’s Board asking that it defer action on the pending proposal of the Arab Center for Dispute Resolution (ACDR) to be accredited as a UDRP arbitration provider and put its revised proposal out for public comment. On Thursday, …

Yesterday we posted a February 26th letter that ICA sent to ICANN urgently requesting that the ICANN Board defer action at its February 28th meeting on the pending proposal of the Arab Center for Dispute Resolution (ACDR) to be accredited as a UDRP arbitration provider — and that ICANN published ACDR’s revised proposal for public comment before taking any final …

Back in September 2010 ICANN invited public comment on the proposal of the Arab Center for Dispute Resolution (ACDR) of Amman, Jordan to become a UDRP arbitration provider. Most of the comments opposed approval or requested changes and clarifications. Nothing more was heard of the application – until it showed up on the Consent Agenda for the ICANN Board meeting …

  Last week ICANN announced that the National Arbitration Forum (NAF) of Minneapolis, MN had been appointed to administer the new Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) rights protection mechanism for new gTLDs. (http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/announcements-and-media/announcement-2-20feb13-en) The announcement raises more questions than it answers.   Despite the press announcement’s claim that NAF “has a proven track record boasting resolution of over 19,000 claims in …

ICA just filed a comment letter responding to a draft ICANN framework for determining what is policy and what is just implementation of existing policy. We’ll be the first to admit that the subject is dry, vague, and of general interest only to Internet policy wonks – but the answers are critically important to assuring that domain investors and registrants …

Domain Sherpa, a well-known website that features video interviews with domain investment industry leaders, has now made available an interview with ICA Counsel Philip Corwin. Titled “ICA: The Domain Name Trade Association That Represents Your Financial Interests – With Philip Corwin”, the interview can be accessed at http://www.domainsherpa.com/phil-corwin-ica-interview/ . The interview was conducted in December 2012 – coincidentally, it took …

Commentary on ICANN’s proposed “Strawman Solution” for the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH) is reaching impressive heights. With just a few hours remaining before the filing deadline eighty-three separate comments have been submitted on the proposal, and we imagine that a few more will trickle in before the inbox is closed. It would be an interesting exercise to calculate how many collective …

The International Telecommunication Union’s (ITU) World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) concluded its Dubai meeting in some disarray last week, with 89 nations (with a collective population of 2.6 billion) signing the revised International Telecommunications Regulations (ITR) and 54 (with a collective population of 3.8 billion) abstaining and thereby effectively saying ‘No’. Ironically, the host nations of the next two …

While ICANN provides excellent remote participation technologies for its thrice-yearly public meetings, it’s been our experience that there is no real substitute for attending in person if you want to get the full picture of activities and have a meaningful impact. A tremendous amount of information is gained from hallway and other informal conversations, and it also allows for one-on-one …