There has been some speculation circulating over the
last few days regarding Afilias WHOIS and registrations made during the Sunrise
Period. Afilias would like to take this opportunity to clarify any confusion
that may have occurred. First, Afilias has successfully begun its Sunrise Period,
which allows trademark and service mark holders around the world the opportunity
to register their marks before the opening of registration to the general public.
Many companies have already identified this window as a strategic opportunity to
secure their marks in a new Internet space.
As part of the Sunrise Period, Afilias
has specifically limited registration to trademark and service mark holders only
by requiring specific information about the mark to be registered. This includes
the mark in ASCII equivalent text that exactly matches the mark, the country and
date of registration, and the registration number.
While Afilias has committed
to providing the most comprehensive protection for trademark holders it can, given
the number of trademark jurisdictions around the world it is simply not possible
to validate all of the information in each of these restrictive fields and maintain
a competitive pricing structure. This aspect of the process has been clear
since Afilias submitted its application to ICANN in October 2000.
Therefore, as
part of the policy developed to restrict cybersquatting in the rollout of .INFO,
Afilias has also created a Sunrise Challenge policy jointly with one of the most
respected dispute resolution providers around the globe the World Intellectual
Property Organization (WIPO). (Note: Background on the Sunrise Period and the
Sunrise Challenge Process is available at http://www.afilias.info/download/fact-sheets/sunrise-fact-sheet.html)
We
feel that this challenge policy incorporates additional protection for trademark
holders by providing any third party the opportunity to challenge a registration
made during the Sunrise Period should it not meet the registration restrictions.
This expedited process opens the battle against cybersquatting to every interested
Internet user and significantly lowers the fee that a trademark holder would traditionally
pay in order to obtain a domain name back through a UDRP proceeding or prevent a
fraudulent registration.
This is the first time in the history of the domain name
system (DNS) that anyone has accepted and processed applications using a Sunrise
mechanism to limit cybersquatting. With this in mind, no process is perfect.
Afilias is committed to thoroughly examining its process to learn and evaluate the
system so that it may be even more useful in the rollout of additional top-level
domains (TLDs).
To address the publishing of the WHOIS - Afilias WHOIS was prematurely
published before the processing of the first queue was complete. In order to
ensure that the system ran accurately during the first queue, Afilias closed immediate
access to the WHOIS.
Afilias has now successfully processed its first two
queues of Sunrise Registrations and has opened its WHOIS service which is available
at http://www.afilias.info/whois/
Afilias welcomes comments and questions to be
sent to info@afilias.info.
Best regards,
Afilias
The .INFO Registry
http://www.afilias.info