Until and unless someone takes my dot commoners position from me I speak
for thousands of voices. No not registrants but users. If someone has a
problem with that let them speak up now!
The recently
posted agenda for the 9 September Public Forum in Montevideo
includes the topic "
Issues and process for evaluation
of new TLDs".
You may wish to take note
of this comment posted to ICANN's off-topic forum
that raises some legitimate
concerns:
"Greetings ICANN Community,
Following is the text of
a news story I have written and attempted to publish
in the news media, but because
Afilias has shut down their WHOIS service, the
facts cannot be verified
at this time by the news publishers. Story follows:
The much anticipated launch
of ".INFO", the first of seven new ICANN-approved
gTLDs to augment the availability
of ".com" and ".net" domain names, got
underway on August 1st when
Afilias (http://www.afilias.info) , the registrar
awarded management of the
.info gTLD, began its "Sunrise" advance
registration for trademark-holders
worldwide. The first round Sunrise
registrations were awarded
by lottery among customer entries submitted
earlier through dozens of
retail domain registrars, and the results were
posted late yesterday on
the Afilias website (http://www.afilias.info)
through their WHOIS lookup.
But the .info launch is permeated
with fraudulent registrations by trademark
imposters, and despite Afilias'
preparations for the launch, no steps have
been taken to prevent trademark
fraud by Sunrise registrants. According to
registration requirements
posted on both the Afilias website
(http://www.afilias.info/faq/ip-owners.html)
and the ICANN website
(http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/info/registry-agmt-appj-11may01.htm)
each Sunrise registration
must be for a domain name exactly matching the
trademark name, registered
in the national trademark registry of a recognized
country, registered before
October 2, 2000. But the Sunrise registrations
for such notable domain
names as "china.info", "japan.info",
"australia.info", "cruises.info",
"rice.info" and "taxes.info" indicate
trademark names having no
similarity to the domain name, and in one case the
trademark is simply "unknown".
Domain names such as "lasvegas.info"
were registered with trademark numbers
that simply do not exist
in the U.S. Trademark online database, strongly
indicating their questionable
authenticity. Patrick Nobriga registered the
Sunrise domain names "Reno.info",
"LosAngeles.info", "chicken.info" and
"beef.info" all using the
same trademark number "137636599", which does not
exist in the U.S. Trademark
online database. Patrick also successfully
registered the Sunrise domain
name "news.info" using the trademark number
"123456789". Should we look
that one up too?
Sunrise registrations such
as "taxes.info", "Japan.info", and "China.info"
have trademark dates later
than October 2, 2000 (the "taxes.info" trademark
submittal indicates a date
just last week, July 27, 2001). Yet these domains
were accepted and processed
in the Afilias Sunrise registration without
question."Employment.info"
and "Hotels.info" were both registered using the
same Israel-issued trademark
number 153278563 during the Sunrise period to
Cass Foster of Communigal
Communications. Nice domain names; but which one,
if any, is the real Israeli
trademark 153278563?And the enterprising Stephen
Rumney of World Information
Services has entered authentic-looking Egyptian
trademark numbers for "Asia.info",
"Jobs.info", "Loans.info", and
"Sports.info", but the trademark
names are "asiainfo", "jobsinfo",
"loansinfo", and "sportsinfo"
which should have resulted in the domain names
"AsiaInfo.info", "JobsInfo.info"
etc.
Despite years of planning
by ICANN, and months of contract negotiations
between ICANN and Afilias,
extensive public relations by Afilias, and
extensive certification
processes for .info authorized registrars, Afilias'
disregard for obviously
fraudulent trademark submissions during the Sunrise
period has prevented tens
of thousands of legitimate customers from competing
for non-trademarked domain
names during the public registration periods that
will not open until September
2001. Now that these important domain names
have been fraudulently awarded
during the Sunrise registration they are no
longer available for legitimate
customers until after a lengthy and costly
"Sunrise Challenge" process
or through legal action in the courts.
Perhaps disgruntled domain
name customers could visit www.attorneys.info to
find an attorney who might
file a class-action lawsuit, but...ooops! The
domain name "attorneys.info"
was registered during the Sunrise period to
Gregory Carbonaro using
U.S. Trademark No. 2469675, and according to the
U.S. Patent Office online
database at http://www.uspto.gov the U.S. Trademark
2469675 was issued in July
2001 to the Dairy Farmers of America for a form of
dried skim milk trademarked
"Savortex"; not "Attorneys".
http://forum.icann.org/cgi-bin/rpgmessage.cgi?offtopic;3B6B40BD0000070B