RE: [gnso-pro-wg] NEW APPROACH TO WORK OF WG

["Neuman, Jeff" <Jeff.Neuman@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I may be speaking out of turn, but I do not believe registries will ever accept 
the notion of reserving trademark names and keeping them out of the TLD simply 
because one or more trademark owners claim rights in the name.  That makes no 
sense from a TLD branding perspective.  In addition, there are very few 
examples of a trademark that is only owned by one party.  There is no such 
thing in US law or otherwise that I am aware of that grant trademark rights "in 
gross" that apply to every class of goods and/or services.  Thus, one party 
reserving a domain name and keeping that name out of the pool of available 
names is depriving other trademark (or non-trademark) owners from having and 
USING that name.

Please also keep in mind that registries have an interest in ensuring that 
names are registered AND USED.  The "and used" part is key.  A name that is 
registered (or reserved), but not used, while it does bring in some revenue, is 
worthless from a branding and marketing perspective.

Too often people lose sight of the fact that each TLD is based on its own 
unique business model and is designed to provide other services other than the 
registration of domain names.  In fact, with respect to the new TLDs that I 
know of that will be proposed in the future, almost all of them are based on a 
value proposition that is greater than the mere registration of a domain name.  
Most of them are based on the provision of other services that are unrelated to 
the domain name.



Jeffrey J. Neuman, Esq. 
Sr. Director, Law, Advanced Services  & Business Development 

NeuStar, Inc. 



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-gnso-pro-wg@xxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-gnso-pro-wg@xxxxxxxxx] On 
Behalf Of Peter Gustav Olson - pgo
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 12:28 PM
To: gnso-pro-wg@xxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [gnso-pro-wg] NEW APPROACH TO WORK OF WG

Here are my thoughts:

As regards Mike P's question, I have no problems including this; anywhere in 
the questionnaire is fine, but a "GIVE US YOUR OPINIONS" section would be a 
good idea.

I agree with Jeff's suggestion that this WG should end in brainstorming, on the 
basis of our collective experience and our discussions, including the facts and 
data gathered by the questionnaire.

Mike P voiced the opinion that there should be no standard mechanism and that 
it should be left to the discretion of the new TLD to start a sunrise. Tim 
states he does not expect we can get a consensus. I respectfully disagree with 
both of these, and I think a consensus is necessary and possible. For example, 
Jeff described the sunrise as expensive for the registries - it is also 
considered expensive for the beneficiaries, so there's consensus there. During 
yesterday's conference Mike P mentioned that trademark owners were gaming the 
system to gain generic domain names; I expect there is consensus that this is 
bad judgment and should be dealt with. The main reason I volunteered for this 
WG is that my little head hurts too much after every new sunrise, with all the 
new rules and hoops that are - there just has to be a better way.

As to brainstorming, I would venture that we could get consensus on the 
following: a new TLD business model should be not based on cybersquatting and 
defensive registrations, but should rather be based on ensuring that the new 
registry gets the premium price of its generic domains for the life of the 
domain. Domain name registrations are the distribution of scarce public 
resource, and should be auctioned to the highest bidder. Rather than sell 
valuable names at wholesale to the first come, first served lucky lottery 
winner for life, these should be "rented" for a limited amount of time to the 
highest bidder. Once we recognize the new registry's right to earn their profit 
on the valuable names that are in use, I think they will accept defensive 
removal of non-used names containing trademarks and other prior name rights. 
The sunrise process will be (much like dot-mobi): here's one group of names 
that the new TLD cannot sell (reserved names), and here's the group of generic 
dom!
 ain names that can be sold/rented at a premium. Granted there will be a little 
overlap between these groups, e.g. APPLE.ABC, etc., and actually resolving that 
issue ought to be the focus of this group. At any rate, a business model based 
on the expectation that a large portion of domain names will be purchased and 
maintained by trademark owners and/or cybersquatters is unacceptable.

 


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Attorney-at-Law

PGO@xxxxxxxxxxx
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-----Original Message-----
From: owner-gnso-pro-wg@xxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-gnso-pro-wg@xxxxxxxxx] On 
Behalf Of Tim Ruiz
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 5:38 PM
To: gnso-pro-wg@xxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [gnso-pro-wg] NEW APPROACH TO WORK OF WG

Edmon, sorry but I can't agree with most of your edits. I think your edits 
actually enhance the bias and are even more leading than they were before. 



I am committed to continue work within this WG as cooperatively as possible. 
That said, since some have voiced their opinion about the eventual outcome of 
this WG, I'll like to add my thoughts on that FWIW.




I am impressed with the participants' efforts, with Kristina's leadership, and 
the efforts and patience of Liz is outstanding as always. But personally, I 
think forming a WG for this purpose was not a wise decision by the committee or 
Council. Or at least, that the terms of work are not appropriate. 



I find it hard to believe that the Council does not realize what Mike and Jeff 
have already pointed out. And I don't believe there is any way that this WG 
will come to any rough consensus on recommendations of any sort. Consensus by a 
count of participants in the WG would not truly represent consitituent 
consensus. In fact, at least one constituent group is not even represented 
here. 



What I do believe this WG could do is gather facts and data and put it in a 
form for the committee to use in furthering its work. The committee and Council 
should then seek responses from individual constituent groups on the other 
terms of work assigned to this WG. 



If the WG does move forward under its current mandate, we should ourselves take 
that approach and save us all a lot of time and potentially pointless debate. 
The WG members would be tasked with soliciting responses and/or statements from 
their constituent group on the recommendation portion of the terms of work. 
Those would be compiled in the report along with the empirical data we've 
collected.
That seems a much more reasonable approach than spending weeks in debate and 
ending up with pretty much the same thing. 





Tim Ruiz

Vice President

Corp. Development & Policy

The Go Daddy Group, Inc.



 



 -------- Original Message --------

Subject: RE: [gnso-pro-wg] NEW APPROACH TO WORK OF WG

From: "Edmon Chung" <edmon@xxxxxxxxxxx>

Date: Wed, April 11, 2007 9:45 am

To: <gnso-pro-wg@xxxxxxxxx>



  I very much agree with Jeff's points.  And look forward to the creative 
discussion about how we can improve the PRO processes for
coming new gTLDs.   Attached also are my thoughts and edits to the
draft questionnaire, which I did find seemingly biased in a way that certain 
questions were framed for an anticipated answer.  Some of the edits attempt to 
balance them out and to try to extract more thoughts
from whom ever is responding to the questionnaire.   Edmon           
From: owner-gnso-pro-wg@xxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-gnso-pro-wg@xxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Neuman, Jeff

Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 10:20 PM

To: gnso-pro-wg@xxxxxxxxx

Subject: [gnso-pro-wg] NEW APPROACH TO WORK OF WG   A number of us are
struggling with trying to come up with a perfect questionnaire to send out to 
obtain data.  However, don't we really already know what answers
we are going to get from the questions?    As a registry that has
introduced (either directly or indirectly) several new TLDs including .biz, .us 
and .travel among others, 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 t!
 o 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.   Given
the facts above, which I believe most would concede in some form, shouldn't we 
focus on creatively brainstorming new solutions to these issues (and there may 
be others), rather than spending our time on a
survey/questionnaire where we already know the outcome.   Maybe this is
too radical, but I thought I would toss it out there.   Jeffrey J.
Neuman, Esq. 

Sr. Director, Law, Advanced Services  & Business Development  NeuStar, Inc. 

Loudoun Tech Center 

46000 Center Oak Plaza 

Sterling, VA 20166 

p: (571) 434-5772 

f: (571) 434-5735 

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