[comments-wipo] IPC Proposal

[Kendall Dawson <kendall@motif1.obs-us.com>]

ICANN was not set up to be the Trademark Police. This is beyond
the scope of their Charter and Bylaws. Here is what ICANN is tasked with doing:

"The day-to-day responsibility for the assignment of IP Addresses, 
Autonomous System Numbers,
and most top and second level Domain Names are handled by the Internet 
Registry (IR) and regional registries."

Nowhere does it say --

"And also to get involved in the disputes and issues of trademark ownership 
and enforcement"

So, I urge ICANN to avoid becoming involved in the trademark disputes and 
any kind of
"Sunrise" period suggested by the WIPO and others. This is a self-serving 
interest and has
nothing to do with the day-to-day administration of the Domain Name System. 
We have  plenty of
resources to resolve trademark disputes already in place. The trademark 
owners are able to access
these resources (UDRP, courts, mediators) at any time. The ICANN articles 
of incorporation state:

"This Corporation is a nonprofit public benefit corporation and is not 
organized for the private gain of any person"

This also means for the private gain of any persons, or companies. The 
Sunrise period and "list of famous names"
only serves the interest of large companies who wish to save themselves 
money and cause "private gain" for
themselves. ICANN should not be supporting this - and according to it's 
articles of incorporation is in fact
banned from acting in this manner.  I agree with John Berryhill's 
commentary from Working Group B:

"...the mechanisms for restricting registrations according to
various pre-emptive systems are flawed technically as they do not accord
with RFC1591, and they are flawed legally as they do not accord with the
remedial character of Law as we in the West have come to know it over a
learning curve of hundreds of years. The IPC does not have the technical
background to run the Internet, and WG-B does not have the legal
sophistication to re-write basic trademark law."

And also with Ross W. Rader's comments from Working Group C:

"ICANN can continue as a body
of charged with the technical management of the Internet's domain name
system, the allocation of IP address space, the assignment of protocol
parameters, and the management of the root server system. Creating "bottom
up consensus based policy" is not the same thing as creating benefit for
the few, at the expense of the many."