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Recent attention to the Eighth Circuit decision in Coca-Cola v. Purdy brings to mind the class of sometimes difficult cases involving the use of another's trademark as a domain name for criticism. An ICANN UDRP decision, Full Sail Inc. v. Ryan Spevack, Case No. D2003-0502 (WIPO October 3, 2003), by Mark VB Partridge, presiding panelist, with Frederick M. Abbott and G. Gervaise Davis III, included a review and analysis of the "your trademark sucks.com" cases that remains a useful reference worthy (I hope) of the lengthy quote below. more
When domain name conflicts between manufacturers and distributors rest on contractual disputes over the use of the trademark owners' marks, ICANN UDRP panels have frequently denied relief. See generally the cases cited and discussed in Western Holdings, LLC v. JPC Enterprise, LLC d/b/a Cutting Edge Fitness and d/b/a Strivectin SD Sales & Distribution, D2004-0426 (WIPO August 5, 2004) by Mark Partridge as sole panelist. The decision summarizes other ICANN UDRP decisions involving contractual disputes. For instance... more
ICANN confirmed today that Judge A. Howard Matz of the U.S. District Court, Central District of California has issued an order dismissing VeriSign, Inc.'s anti-trust claims against ICANN, with prejudice. In dismissing VeriSign's anti-trust claims, Judge Matz noted that VeriSign had failed in its first amended complaint to sufficiently allege an anti-trust claim. more
In a recent decision, a World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) domain name arbitration panel dismissed a complaint filed by the Mexican Tourist Board (MTB) against Latin America Telecom (LAT) concerning the domain name "mexico.com." The panel went so far as to find that the complaint was brought in "bad faith" and made a finding of attempted "Reverse Domain Name Hijacking" against the MTB. ...In its complaint, the MTB argued that LAT had registered the domain name in "bad faith" in order to sell it for a profit at a later date. more
This is the second part of a three-part series interview by Geert Lovink with Jeanette Hofmann, policy expert from Germany, where she talks about her experiences as a member of the ICANN's Nominating Committee and her current involvement as a civil society member of the German delegation for the World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS). "So much in the current debates over global governance seems to go back to the issue what place governments and individual nation states have within global governance. What has been your ICANN experience? Ideally, what would be the place of the state? Do you believe in a federal structure? Should, for instance, bigger countries, in terms of its population, have a great say?..." more
IPv6 took a significant step forward this week with ICANN's decision to officially add the next generation protocol to its root server systems. The shift to IPv6 is perhaps the largest and most significant change to the structure of the Internet in decades - ICANN's move a signal that the revolution has officially begun. more
After almost four years, ICANN has announced that they have adopted a new domain name transfer policy that make it much easier for domain name registrants to do business with the ICANN accredited Registrar of their choosing. Highlights from this new policy include; streamlined definition of responsibilities as it relates to the management of the domain name. Under the new policy, only the Administrative Contact or Registrant can authorize a domain name transfer to a new service provider... more
As the Internet has grown and matured, it has become obvious to everyone involved that the DNS Whois system, as it currently exists, is not a sustainable way to share contact information for resolving network problems. ICANN, in an attempt to save DNS Whois, has plunged head long into the process of developing new policies aimed at fixing it. While I respect all of the hard work that has gone into this process, the results thus far have only made it clearer that this system faces intractable problems. more
"The Root Server is a Scarce Resource" is the focus of part one of a three-part series based on a study prepared by Karl M. Manheim, Professor of Law at Loyola Law School and Lawrence B. Solum, Professor of Law at University of San Diego. Special thanks and credit to Hastings Communications and Entertainment Law Journal, Vol. 25, p. 317, 2004. ...We begin our analysis of domain name policy with a brief excursion into economics. Economics cannot answer all of the questions raised by domain name policy. First, domain name policy must answer to the discipline of network engineering. A useful domain name system must work, and the functionality, scalability, reliability, and stability of the system are determined by the soundness of its engineering. Second, domain name policy must answer to public policy. The Internet is a global network of networks, and Internet policy is answerable to a variety of constituencies, including national governments, the operators of the ccTLDs, Internet Service Providers, information providers, end users of the Internet, and many others. more
It seems to be impossible to implement a law against spam - unsolicited bulk email - without making a hash of it. At best, anti-spam laws are ineffective; at worst, they cause more problems than spam itself. Can technology fare any better? ...But despite this flurry of initiatives, we are yet to see a definitive answer to the spam problem. An Anti-Spam Technical Alliance has been formed by Microsoft, America Online, Yahoo! and EarthLink, but these companies continue to proffer competing solutions. Meanwhile, the technology being deployed in the spam wars is causing collateral damage, in the form of 'false positives' - email that is incorrectly categorised as spam, and so never reaches its intended recipient. more
It is difficult to explain RFC 3743 or commonly known as the Joint Engineering Team (JET) Guidelines without some lesson on Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK), particularly how it relates to Internationalized Domain Names (IDN). Luckily, an Internet-Draft we wrote back in 2001 discusses the issues quite neatly in this context. In brief, Chinese characters (Hanzi) or Han ideographs are evolved from pictographs (writing made up of pictures) across thousands of years. Unlike other writing systems, Han Ideographs are constantly evolving. more
ICANN has made great strides in implementing steps to improve the organization's transparency, accountability, openness - according to their most recent Status Report [PDF]. The report describes the requirements of their MOU with the Department of Commerce and what the organization has done to toward achieving these goals. However, even though the Report makes it sound as if ICANN is on the right track, some troubling issues lay underneath the surface of the Report. more
A United Nations task force recently held a two-day workshop on the question of who governs the Internet. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan challenged those of us present to ensure that the Internet and the World Wide Web support "the cause of human development."
Following in the long-standing tradition of skepticism about governments in the Internet community, some in the technical community and the Internet's chattering classes view the concerns expressed by the United Nations and countries such as Brazil, India and others, as a threat to the operation of the Internet itself. This article was originally published at CNET News.Com on April 6, 2004. more
ICANN has submitted the first report of what will be a series of annual reports summarizing its "expierince" with the Whois Data problems and inaccuracies. While emphasizing that "ICANN-accredited registrars are obligated by the terms of their accreditation agreements to investigate and correct any reported inaccuracies," the report provides the following conclusions: more
CircleID recently interviewed Jonathan Weinberg, Professor of Law at Wayne State University to discuss legal and regulatory issues that have been raised against Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). VeriSign, the registry operator of the two most popular top-level domains .com and .net, filed a lawsuit against ICANN on February 26, 2004 complaining that the Internet regulatory body has extended "its authority beyond the scope of its contracts". Did ICANN cross its contractual boundaries? To what extent does ICANN's contract limit its technical coordination functions and how much of a threat does VeriSign's lawsuit impose? Jonathan Weinberg explains... more
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