[registrars] Working Group B

["Michael D. Palage" <mpalage@infonetworks.com>]

Because of the concerns about the my potential conflict of interest as
secretariat of the registrar constituency and chair of Working Group B, I
ask one of the other elected Registrar representatives Ken, Erica or Paul to
step forward and draft a report on behalf of the registrar constituency.
However, I encourage ALL registrars to submit their comments concerning the
Working Group B report via the ICANN web site.  Although I will not be
submitting a comment as your secretariat, I will be submitting a comment in
an individual capacity.  In last week's teleconference the following
positions were discussed.

[1] No additional safeguards are needed for the trademark community. The
UDRP and existing national laws are sufficient.

[2] A Sunrise Proposal as stated in the IPC proposal is basis to work from
provided that certain issues were resolved to the registrar's  satisfaction,
i.e. liability and safe harbor provisions.

[3] A Sunrise Proposal that involves a famous marks list created by WIPO.
There were some people that expressed time limits and upper caps. But for
this straw vote I have lumped these issues under one umbrella.

[4] Additional safeguards are probably politically necessary but I do not
have a specific solution.

[5] No comment - need more time to analyze the issue

For those registrars that supported either position 2 or 3 please, consider
signing the following statement that I will be submitting in a personal
capacity.

PROPOSE STATEMENT


The undersigned Registrars recognize that it would be politically prudent to
provide additional safeguards to the intellectual property constituency
(IPC) to ensure the controlled responsible growth of the name space. Over
the past several months, the concept of a Sunrise Period has been discussed
as an equitable solution to the IPC's concerns, as oppose to the more
onerous and unreliable filtering mechanism as originally proposed in the
WIPO report and the previous IPC's proposals.

The basic concept of a Sunrise Period, allows "eligible" trademark owners to
pre-register a limited number of domain names prior to the new top-level
domain being open to the public. Because of the uncertainty surrounding the
Sunrise Period, the undersigned agree that the following safeguards are
mandatory.

(1) The proposed Sunrise Period should only be applied to the test-bed
period for new top-level domains. After the conclusion of the test-bed
period, a committee should be commissioned to see if the Sunrise Period
worked adequately or was misused.
(2) The limited number of variations that a trademark owner could
pre-register should be further limited to identical or nearly identical
marks. Therefore, domain names such as trademark_sucks.TLD would be exempt.
(3) The Sunrise Proposal shall not be mandatory across all top-level domains
during the test-bed period. There are certain non-commercial or chartered
top-level domains where this protection would not be prudent.
(4) The UDRP should be expanded to allow aggrieved third parties the ability
to challenge potential abusive registrations under the Sunrise Period.

Although the undersigned Registrars agree that a Sunrise Period is a
potentially workable solution with proper safeguards to limit potential
registrar liability, there is still a lack of consensus among the
signatories about which "eligible" trademark owners would be allowed to
participate in the Sunrise Period. The following two viewpoints have
emerged: (1) A Sunrise Period in which all national registered trademark
owners could participate and (2) A Sunrise Period in which only those
trademarks appearing on a famous marks lists could participate.  Those
registrars that have backed the creation of a famous list have additionally
requested that safeguarding involving the time allotted to create the list
(4 to 6 months) and the total number of marks (<10,000) also be addressed to
their satisfaction.

NOTE: Registrars can sign in both columns if they feel that both viewpoints
are acceptable.



Sunrise for all registered trademarks                           Sunrise for
famous trademarks only

________(signatory)_____________
________(signatory)_____________

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