Whois System

[rie.sugita.gd@xxxxxxxxxxx]

I'm working for the Trademark group, Intellectual Property department of 
Hitachi, Ltd., and combating with cyber squatters every day. Whois System is 
important for brand owner to protect it's precious brand from cyber squatters. 
Therefore, I'm against the idea of deleting or limiting access to Whois data.

In the field of Internet, a quick action is inevitable to stop trademark 
infringement activities in order to minimize the number of victims. For that 
sake, Whois system is the most powerful tool for checking the information 
regarding infringers at the early stage. If the free open access to Whois data 
is blocked, it's no doubt that our action against cyber squatters would be 
delayed, and that could cause serious damages to our brand. Actually, we 
experienced a case of so-called "private registration", and we had a hard time 
in identifying the registrant to whom we wanted to send a cease and desist 
letter. Also, if we put too much weight on privacy and abolish useful Whois 
system, that would result in encouraging cyber squatters, who wish to remain 
anonymous, to commit Internet fraud and other schemes that confuse and deceive 
the public in the Internet marketplace under the cloak of p
rivacy right. 

Especially, if the website is dealing with our counterfeit products, it's not 
only the matter of domain name, and deleting the domain name registration is 
not enough for fundamental solution. In those cases, we need to conduct 
investigation immediately so that we can detect the factory or whole seller 
where the fake products come from. For the investigation, address or telephone 
number on the Whois data is helpful, though we know such information on the 
Whois is not always reliable. It's also very important to investigate without 
being known by the domain name registrant, because often times, as soon as they 
notice that we come after them, they disappear before we catch them. Then, they 
can reopen their website with the same contents under a different domain name 
to sell counterfeit products. The problem is that it's difficult to find the 
new website from our side if we fail in the f
irst one. Therefore, the Whois information is very important because it's the 
clue for the investigation in order to reveal the whole network of counterfeit 
activities, and crack down the criminals completely.

In conclusion, from the standpoint of a famous trademark owner, we strongly 
propose that the GNSO Council should adopt Motion 2 and reject Motions 1 and 3.

Sincerely,

Rie Sugita
Hitachi, Ltd.