Dear All, The PRO WG has decided to undertake a questionnaire to solicit views on existing rights protection mechanisms. The questionnaire is online -- > https://www.bigpulse.com/692i > > It proved highly controversial in the WG, not least due to concerns as to methodology --with Bruce Tonkin eventually pointing out it could not be styled as a survey, as originally proposed, due to its failure to meet accepted standards for neutral data gathering. I refrained from input into this on the basis that it would be better to have distance from it so be able to balance the results in a minority report or similar. The concern is that the other constituencies will have members complete it in great numbers and that majority views will preempt the work of the WG. As one particiapnt of the WG said: "I personally believe the results of the questionnaire will show that: 1) Trademark owners and businesses believe some sort intellectual property rights mechanism is needed in the introduction of new gTLDs. 2) Any mechanism that is introduced should take all steps possible to minimize fraudulent or abusive domain name registrations during the launch process. 3) Each of the processes introduced prior, whether Sunrise or IP claim, had issues with their implementation and these issues need to be resolved for any future launch. Implementation issues involve (a) verification of claims/registrations, (b) dispute resolution mechanisms, (c) which marks are deserving of protections, etc. 4) Registries believe that the existing mechanisms are too costly (both in terms of business, operations, support and legal) and present a burden to introducing new gTLDs. 5) Defensive Registrations are issues both to trademark owners and to domain name registries. For trademark owners and businesses, defensive registrations can amount to a significant cost to their companies and to registries, purely defensive registrations do nothing to enhance the utility of the new TLD - they merely cerate a carbon copy of other TLDs. Contrary to what some believe IP Launch processes are not a boon to registries and amount for a small insignifanct portion of the total domains registered in a particular TLD." We have in any event been asked to circulate this to our constituencies and members. I'd be grateful for any thoughts as to how the NCUC might want to deal with it. Best, Victoria