3 Pending Motions on Whois system

["Pinaire, Joan" <Joan.Pinaire@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

To whom it may concern,

I understand that ICANN will be voting on three motions that will
determine the future structure of the domain name and Whois system.  I
am writing now to request that you vote in favor of Motion 2, which
essentially states that ICANN will conduct an objection and
comprehensive study on the legitimate abuses and uses of Whois data
before making any changes to the structure.

I am Intellectual Property counsel for Realogy Corporation, which is the
world's largest franchisor of real estate brands.  My many
responsibilities include the maintenance and protection of the trademark
portfolios for the world famous marks CENTURY 21, COLDWELL BANKER,
SOTHEBY'S INTERNATIONAL REALTY and ERA.  I also manage the trademark
portfolios for Realogy's many subsidiaries, including Cartus Corporation
and NRT LLC.

In my position, I am tasked with the protection of the brands on the
internet, including chasing many hundreds of unauthorized registrants of
domain names that include our brands, or formatives of them.  I refer to
the Whois system of many different Registries numerous times (too many
to count) during a work week in order to determine whether or not the
registrant is authorized.  In my experience, wrongful users,
particularly experienced cybersquatters, hide their identities behind
various Privacy Protection Services offered by Registries.  Such
services frustrate the true trademark owner's ability to protect its
valuable goodwill and incur added expenses in trying to track down the
owner of the domain so that proper action can be taken.  The Privacy
Protection services do not reveal the owner's identity and one cannot
determine if they even pass along the demand letters that are sent to
them for offending domains.  Bad acting registrants who don't use such
services often provide patently false registration information when
obtaining a domain registration (phone number shown as all 9's, no
address or address consists of the country name in all fields, etc.),
but are still somehow able to register the domain.  So although there
may be some whois information, it is useless to the rightful trademark
owner in tracking down the registrant.

If a party had the proper right to register a domain name, it should
have no issue with revealing its identity through the whois system.  I
have been a trademark attorney for many years, and in that time I have
seen the registration of offending domain names explode since "identity
hiding" services offered by registries have come into play.
Cybersquatters hide behind these convenient services by paying a small
fee - they benefit and so does the service provider (which receives the
fee) - while the trademark owner suffers the dilution and other misuse
of its brands on the internet.  In addition, the rightful mark owner is
forced to incur untold expenses in trying to track down the owner or
having to file the UDRP or civil actions to recover the domains, which
are often difficult, if not impossible, to serve on the offending party
since the whois information is either hidden, incomplete or false.  

To limit the amount of publicly available whois information, or
eliminate the whois database information altogether, would totally
eliminate legitimate trademark owner's ability to police its marks which
bad acting third parties register as domains.  If the registrant's
information was public (and required to be accurate), I truly believe
that the world would see a dramatic decline in infringing abuses of
legitimate brands because the cyberbersquatter would know he or she
could be found and forced to answer for their actions.  

I repeat my request that you vote to approve Motion 2 and allow the
legitimate trademark owner's concerns be heard rather than listen to the
many cybersquatters who are concerned their ill-gotten stream of income
based entirely on the goodwill of others' marks will be cut-off once
their identities are revealed.

Very truly yours,
Joan T. Pinaire
Vice President - Legal
Realogy Corporation
1 Campus Drive
Parsippany, NJ 07054
Tel - 973-407-5269
Fax - 973-407-5331
Email - joan.pinaire@xxxxxxxxxxx
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