ICANN Email Archives: [whois-comments-2007]

[remcdonald@xxxxxxxxxxx]

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am the Associate General Counsel for Intellectual Property of The 
Sherwin-Williams Company.  Sherwin-Williams is a multinational company 
having approximately eight billion dollars in annual sales, and we own in 
excess of 6,000 registered trademarks worldwide.  I would urge the GNSO 
Counsel of ICANN to adopt Motion 2, which was advanced and supported by 
the Internet Committee of the International Trademark Association. I would 
further urge ICANN to conduct an objective and comprehensive study on the 
abuses and uses of WHOIS data before making any policy change in the 
current WHOIS system.

We are a significant user of the Internet in sales and advertising, and we 
are aware of many misuses of our trademarks and domain names by 
cybersquatters and others who hope to mislead the purchasing public. Those 
who misuse our intellectual property in this manner frequently hope to 
hide their identities behind the anonymity and transitory nature of the 
Internet.  I would urge the committee to conduct a study as proposed by 
Motion 2 - and to maintain and, in fact, to strengthen the scope of 
disclosure requirements under the WHOIS system to insure that accurate 
contact, ownership and identity information  for all TLD name 
registrations is available to all Internet users.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Robert E. McDonald 
Associate General Counsel - Patents and Trademarks
The Sherwin-Williams Company 
101 Prospect Ave. 
Cleveland, OH 44115 USA
216-566-2432 (direct dial)
216-515-4400 (facsimile)
remcdonald@xxxxxxxxxxx 

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