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auda is conducting a review of the auDRP – the dispute resolution policy covering domain names registered in the .au domain name space.

The auDRP was derived from the UDRP, so many of the principles worked out under the latter are equally applicable under the auDRP. Two of the main differences, however, are that under the auDRP:

• a complainant may have rights sufficient to found a complaint “in a name”, not just a trade mark; and
• the auDRP requires a complaint to show only registration in bad faith or use in bad faith, it is not necessary to show both bad faith requirements have been satisfied.

auda published an issues paper (pdf).

There is some interesting information about how many disputes there have been and which service providers have been providing the dispute resolution services – in recent years it has been WIPO and LEADR. There is also a breakdown of fees charged by various bodies for dispute resolution under the UDRP.

One question posed is whether auda should put the fees charged for dispute resolution up. Other issues on which submissions are invited were identified by ICANN in Annex 2 to its Final Issues Report (pdf) in 2011 on the UDRP. They include:

Policy/Process Issue	Description
Safe Harbors	Policy should include clear safe harbors, such as to protect free speech and fair use or other non-commercial rights of registrants
Appeals	No appeals of process in policy itself– two options appeal of decision or trial de novo
	Establish an internal appeals process to ensure implementation of fair trial requirements
Statute of Limitations	There should be an express time limitation for claims brought under the policy
Reverse Domain Name Hijacking/ Uniform Procedures for Transfers	A finding of reverse domain name hijacking is rarely found, and panelists should be encouraged to make this finding when appropriate
	No specified timeframe for implementing transfers
Business Constituency	Delays often experienced in implementation of decisions by Registrars
Loser Pays Nothing	Losing Respondent should pay filing fees and attorney’s fees

However, I am coming to this late: submissions, if any, are supposed to be in by 31 January 2013.

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auDA is the body regulating the .au “name space” or ccTLD.

In that role, it has issued a number of policies including the auDRP (modelled on the UDRP) for the resolution of disputes between rights “holders” and the registrants of confusingly similar domain names.

auDA’s Board has now announced its acceptance of a number of the recommendations of:

• the 2010 Names Policy Panel (pdf); and
• the Secondary Market Working Group (pdf).

2010 Names Policy Panel

Among the recommendations that have been accepted are:

Domain Name Eligibility and Allocation Policy Rules for Open 2LDs:

• That the requirement for registrants to be Australian (or registered to trade in Australia) should remain in place.
• That the “special interest club” eligibility criterion for org.au and asn.au domain names should be more clearly defined.
• That auDA should publish the results of its periodic audits.
• That auDA’s position on third party rights with respect to domain name leasing or sub-licensing arrangements should be clarified and published.
• That the close and substantial connection rule for id.au should be relaxed to include domain names that refer to personal hobbies and interests.
• That direct registrations under .au should not be allowed at this time.
• the list of reserved names (i.e., those you can’t have) should be maintained and updated.
• the misspellings policy should be continued in its current form (e.g. you can’t register acebook.com.au, aaami.com.au etc.).
• A revision of the “domain monetisation” policy so that it will no longer be a standalone policy and “the definition of “domain monetisation” will be replaced with a description of permissible practice, to accommodate a range of monetisation models”.

When the “domain monetisation” policy was originally adopted:

a monetised website was easily recognisable and mostly followed a common format, which meant that enforcement of the policy was relatively straightforward. However, the practice of domain monetisation has significantly changed from a simple webpage with click-through advertising links, to incorporate other formats such as news articles, blogs, images and so on. Methods employed by domainers (ie. people who register domain names for monetisation purposes) are becoming increasingly sophisticated and complex. In some cases it may be that domainers are attempting to circumvent the policy. However, to be fair to the domainer industry, the practice itself is constantly evolving as domainers test and refine ways of generating revenue.

If this were a gTLD, the trade mark owners would be going ballistic – “to be fair to the domainer industry”?????

The proposed revisions, however, would still prohibit allow objection on grounds that “the domain name must not be, or incorporate, an entity name, personal name or brand name in existence at the time the domain name was registered.” See chapter 3 and p. 20 of the Name Policy Panel’s final report (pdf).

Some recommendations still under consideration:

• That registrants should be able to license a domain name for a 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 year period.
• That, in the absence of any compelling technical or policy reason to maintain the restriction, single character domain names should be released (subject to the registrant being eligible to register the name).

Secondary Market working group

The accepted recommendations of this group effectively aim to put in place a mechanism to transfer domain names from one registrant to another in place of the current “workaround” involving surrender and (re-)registration (with the attendant risk that someone might get the name in between those two events.

Announcements: Names policy, Secondary Market

Reports: Names policy (pdf), Secondary Market (pdf)

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Further to yesterday’s post, ICANN has released:

• v4 of the draft Applicant’s Guidebook; and
• an Economic Framework for the Analysis of the Expansion of Generic Top-level Domain Names;
• and two “snapshots”.

The materials are open for public comment until 21 July.

Lid dip: Marty

The Economic Framework and snapshots can be downloaded via here.

Try not to be cynical: this is about giving people who missed out on registering their domain name in .com (or wherever) a chance to get their preferred domain name; it is not about creating ways for registrars to generate more fees or …

According to the Economic Framework document, there would be a US$185,000 starting fee for a new gTLD.

It identified:

The potential benefits of new gTLDs to Internet users are that they may provide competition to existing gTLDs, add differentiation and new products that are valuable to consumers, and/or relieve congestion problems caused by having only a few gTLDs.

Notwithstanding 2 waves of new gTLDs, 73% of domain names registered in “open” gTLDs are still registered in .com (which accounts for only 6.3% of all domain names). “Only” 52% of survey respondents who registered their domain name in .biz, for example, had registered the domain “for defensive purposes”, i.e., to stop someone else registering it. So much for competition and reducing congestion. How many people can register “coca-cola” anyway?

Apparently, one fifth of survey respondents who registered in .biz or .info or .name had not previously registered a domain name and 55% claimed to have registered a different domain name to names registered in a pre-existing gTLD. However, looking at duplicate domain names registered in more than 1 open gTLD:

a high percentage of domain names registered on .info were also registered on .com (89 percent), .net (81 percent), and .org (75 percent), and a high percentage of domain names registered on .biz were also registered on .com (85 percent).

but:

only 11 percent of the overlapping .info and .com names were registered to the same owner. For .biz and .com overlap, the percentage registered to the same owner was higher, 42 percent.

A different study by Zittrain and Edelman based on a sample of 823 names registered in both .biz and .com estimated about 20-30% were registered to the same person.

About half of the registrations in .info and .biz were inactive, while 15% simply redirected to another website.

New gTLDs might reduce search costs, perhaps, on the theory that you would only have to go to the .canon gTLD to find information about Canon’s products. Would Canon give up canon.com? Who searches that way anyway? Only 90% of survey respondents reported using a search engine to find things on the Internet – so for those users of search engines, new gTLDs are “less likely” to reduce search costs. How long does it take to get a search result from Google or Bing! or Yahoo (may be a problem with exclamation marks here)?

On the negative side, the Economic Framework reports an estimate of legal costs for UDRP proceedings in the order of US$1.58 million which “suggests that the external costs associated with cyber-squatting in new gTLDs would be low”, although the study does acknowledge that there would be an increase in costs having regard to steps taken outside the UDRP.

The Framework also reports on a fascinating study about “typosquatting”. Apparently, about 80% of the sample misspelt domain names resolved to pay-per-click advertising sites.

“Industry sources” reported to ICANN that it costs a company between US$6,000 and %15,000 p.a. to monitor each trade mark that is being protected. [What monitoring activities are your clients spending that money on?]

There is lots more fascinating detail in the Economic Framework document in particular.

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The US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a district court ruling in which a creditor of John Zuccarini successfully levied execution against a domain name held in Mr  Zuccarini’s name.

Mr Zuccarini, sometimes known as Cupcake Patrol and other “colourful” noms de plume, may be familiar to those of you around in the “old” days of the UDRP from the frequency in which he appeared as a respondent.

Venkat, in a guest post on Professor Goldman’s Technology and Marketing blog, highlights, the Ninth Circuit’s ruling permitted execution on the basis of the location of the domain name registrar. So, if your client has registered his/her/its domain name through a US registrar, the domain name could be at risk if your client becomes embroiled in a dispute with someone who has access to the US legal system.

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For those of you wondering what Google Chrome is all about, David Pogue does an excellent review and Google, of course, has pretty good explanatory materials including a comic.

Something your brand owners may want to start thinking about is the new monoline address/search bar: you type in a word and Chrome starts suggesting a range of alternatives.  See an example and watch the video here.

Nothing to worry about, perhaps, if you type in coke and get taken here but what happens if the top suggestion takes you here (takes forever to load)?

This brings up the trade mark/IP issues Marty Schwimmer spotted emerging in Japan here.

Oh, that other, EULA issue here, there and everywhere else too.

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