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[council] Notification of the DNSO NC Resolution on the Famous Trade-Marks
19 May 2000
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
Board of Directors
4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 330
Marina del Rey CA 90292
Cc: Michael Roberts, President and CEO
DNSO Names Council Resolution on the Famous Trade-Marks and the
operation of the Domain Name System.
The Names Council recognizes the enormous work undertaken by Working
Group B. The Names Council acknowledges that according to its final
report, Working Group B has reached consensus on three points, namely:
(1) Some type of mechanism, yet to be determined, is necessary in
connection with famous trademarks and the operation of the Domain
Name System.
(2) There does not appear to be the need for the creation of a
universally famous marks list at this point in time.
(3) The protection afforded to trademark owners should depend upon the
type of top-level domains that are added to the root.
With regards to points (1) and (3), the NC notes that the Working Group
members could not reach consensus on the type of mechanism that should
be incorporated into the roll-out of new gTLDs (point (1)), which is
understandable given their consensus in point (3) that the protection
should likely vary depending on the type of top-level domain.
The NC concludes that there is community consensus and recommends that
there should be varying degrees of protection for intellectual property
during the startup phase of new top-level domains.
Therefore, the NC recommends that the ICANN Board make clear that
nothing in the general consensus items, or areas of non-consensus,
should be construed as creating immunity from the UDRP or other legal
proceeding should a domain name registrant in a chartered top-level
domain violate the charter or other legal enforceable rights.
The NC notes that the principles of differentiated gTLDs (from WG-C) may
provide additional assistance in avoiding confusion.
With regards to item (2) on universally famous marks, the NC concludes
that there is no consensus in the community at the present time that
such a list should be adopted by ICANN.
The NC also recommends to the ICANN Board that it take note of the
Working Group B report, including the submissions by participating
parties.
The NC would like to express its gratitude to the hard work of Michael
D. Palage, Kathryn Kleiman, and Philip Sheppard in steering the Working
Group and seeking to guide them towards consensus on the difficult set
of issues they were assigned.
Sincerely,
Elisabeth Porteneuve
DNSO Secretariat
on behalf of the DNSO Names Council
Annex: Summary of WG-B work, July 1999 - May 2000,
http://www.dnso.org/dnso/notes/20000519.NCwgb-final.html