The Sunset provision is fine if the Registry doesn't mind getting sued....It is a
nobrainer that when you set up a particular situation, for a set group of people,
you will undoubtedly leave out others who have as much right to the domains as they
do....Such is the case with Amazon.com....No doubt they would like Amazon.info (for
whatever reason)....Is amazon no longer a generic term, to describe a large river?
Does the word Amazon soley belong to Amazon.com?? What you're doing is tinkering
with something that up to this point has in fact worked....Believe or not...it has
worked. The United States has a tough Anti-Cyber squatting Act that can fine
someone up to $100,000 plus court costs for cyber squatting (illegally)....We have
WIPO which decides cases that can show that if you have a TM, and someone legitimately
squatted the name FOR A PROFIT OR MISCHIEF (that is important), then usually they
ended up with the domain....So I ask you ICANN and Afilias (a.k.a Verisign/Register.com)....What
do you hope to accomplish by implementing the Sunrise Provision?? IF your answer
is to protect TM holders, please allow me to explain, how skewed that line of reasoning
is. A TM holder is responsible for his/her mark...(no one else)...If
you set precedent, by implementing a Sunrise, you will forever change the way the
courts view the registries...They will no longer be impartial, rather they will be
knee deep in "assigning rights"....What could this provision cost the average registry?
I am not sure they would be able to exist....I do not exaggerate....So who would
be left?? Verisign? Register.com??
The thing that gets me with this
Sunrise is that it is straight out of a communist manual. For a mechanism
such as this, controls a good, you undoubtedly create a lopsided market...Those that
can afford a TM, and those that cannot but are running a legitimate business...Free
markets tend to let the "market" control the flow of trade....i.e. First Come First
Serve Principle....If you cyber squat (illegally--threatening a company) you will
lose your rights to the domain (via the available relief methods described above)...and
as WIPO has shown...NO QUESTIONS ASKED...
I suggest the ICANN board take a hard
look at what Image Online Design has come up with to protect domain name holders
...They will allow a new .web domain to be put on hold if someone is squatting the
domain, until it is officially decided using UDRP who it belongs to...Fairness results
in this situation and the market is left to do its job, like it was designed to....
PLEASE...if
any of you board members actually read this comment board, if you take nothing from
what I have written about over the course of a year and a half.....PLEASE DO NOT
ALLOW THE SUNRISE TO GO FORWARD BASED ON THE REASONS I GAVE ABOVE....I do care about
TM protection as this is also a very important aspect of a free market, only the
Sunrise, goes around the market first.