Dear all,
- apologies for the long email -
The time is upon us to submit our comments on the revised
versions of the
ICANN staff on the recommendations submitted by the
Special Trademark Team
(STI) in January 2010. I know that I should have
submitted this to you earlier on, but may I remind everyone that the deadline
is April 1, 2020 for the submission of comments. I would appreciate if you
could return your comments/suggestions to me by tomorrow at the very latest.
Here is a brief reminder of the whole process.
After the rejection of the Implementation Recommendation
Team (IRT)
proposals during the public comment period, ICANN
produced two documents -
one of the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMC) and the other on
the Uniform Rapid
Suspension (URS) system and asked the GNSO to form a team
to review these
documents. The GNSO created the STI, which comprised of
representatives from
all its constituencies. NCUC was represented in this team
by Robin, Kathy,
Wendy and myself, with Mary being the alternate member.
The STI was tasked to either accept the Staff's proposals
or reach consensus
on a new set of proposals. After a month of extensive
meetings and debate, we managed to
produce two documents - one on the TMC and the other on
the URS - which in
their majority received the consensus of the STI (most of
the particular
issues of both proposals received unanimous consensus,
whilst some specific
issues received majority consensus). The final STI report
can be found here:
gnso.icann.org/issues/sti/sti-wt-recommendations-11dec09-en.pdf
After the STI submitted its report and was endorsed by
the GNSO, a public
comment period was initiated -
http://forum.icann.org/lists/sti-report-2009/. In the
meantime, in its
Nairobi meeting, the ICANN Board endorsed the STI's
recommendations:
http://www.icann.org/en/minutes/resolutions-12mar10-en.htm.
Taking into account the public comments, the ICANN staff
produced - what
they called - a revised document on both proposals,
seeking to take into
consideration the STI recommendations as well as the
comments received
during the public comments period. These new revised
proposals can be found
at: for the TMC (
http://www.icann.org/en/public-comment/#tmc) and for the
URS ( http://www.icann.org/en/public-comment/#urs) and
they are now open for
a public comments period. The deadline for submission of
the comments is
April 1, 2010.
Generally speaking the revised proposal takes into
consideration most of the
issues that the STI recommended. However, there are some
specific issues, in
which the new recommendations are worst and additions
have been made which
are arbitrary and - at some instances - even
illegitimate.
I am attaching our comments for both the URS and the TMC.
Best
KK
Dr. Konstantinos Komaitis,
Law Lecturer,
University of Strathclyde,
The Law School,
The Lord Hope Building,
141 St. James Road,
Glasgow, G4 0LT
UK
tel: +44 (0)141 548 4306
http://www.routledgemedia.com/books/The-Current-State-of-Domain-Name-Regulation-isbn9780415477765
Selected publications:
http://hq.ssrn.com/submissions/MyPapers.cfm?partid=501038
Website: http://domainnamelaw.ning.com/