Web domain name revolution could hit trademark defence: UN
Web domain name revolution could hit trademark defence:
UN
By Jonathan Fowler | AFP – 17 hrs ago
Geneva (AFP) - The mass expansion of Internet domain
names could cause havoc for the defence of trademarks in cyberspace, the UN's
intellectual property body warned on Monday.
"We have this extraordinary expansion that is going
on," said Francis Gurry, head of the World Intellectual Property
Organization (WIPO), which oversees global rules against cybersquatting.
"That is going to have an impact, which is likely to
be significant, on trademark protection. The exact nature of the impact, we
aren't sure of at this stage, but it is likely to be significant and
disruptive," Gurry told reporters.
"Trademark owners are very concerned about the
impact that this expansion will have on branding systems," he added.
Opening the Internet to domain names that go far beyond
classics such as .com, .org, .net, .gov, and .edu has been heralded by US-based
Web overlords the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
as the biggest change to the Web since it was created.
There have long been just 22 generic top-level domains
(gTLDs), of which .com and .net comprise the lion's share.
But California-based ICANN has said that the snowballing
of the Internet -- with some two billion users around the world, half of them
in Asia -- makes new names essential.
Around 1,400 new gTLDs are gradually being put up for
grabs, with the first 160 already delegated to various Web registration firms.
"The opportunity for misuse of trademarks expands
exponentially," said Gurry, noting that registering a domain name is a
cheap, automatic procedure that takes a matter of seconds and does not have a
filter to examine whether there is a trademark conflict.
"That brings with it the attendant inconvenience of
a much greater burden of surveillance on the part of trademark owners," he
said.
In the initial mix, opened in January, are addresses
ending in guru, bike, singles, as well as clothing, holdings, plumbing and
ventures.
Other generic terms on the horizon include .football,
.flights, .cards and .bid.
The first-ever non-Latin letter domains have also been
approved, including the Chinese for "game", the Arabic for
"web" or "network," or the Cyrillic for "online".
- Concern over 'side effect' -
Gurry acknowledged that the expansion was meant to ease
use of the fast-growing Internet.
"So presumably, their reasons for expanding relate
to improvement of navigational capacity on the Internet. What we're concerned
is the side effect of the impact that that has on branding systems that are
used by consumers for their interaction with commerce," he added.
Trademark owners aggrieved by cybersquatting -- the
abusive registration of domain names, sometimes in order to sell them back to
rights holders or draw consumers to rival products -- have the option of
turning to WIPO's arbitration procedure.
In 2013, 2,585 such cases were filed with WIPO,
concerning a record 6,191 individual domain names.
Under international rules, Web registration firms must
void the registration of losers in WIPO cybersquatting cases.
The UN body is already hearing its first case concerning
a new gTLD, filed in February and pitting a German company against the Dutch
registree of the still-inactive website canyon.bike.
Erik Wilbers, director or WIPO's arbitration arm, said
that the vast increase of gTLDs will mean that trademark holders would have to
be "much more focused" in what they challenge.
"You cannot keep shooting at everything that moves
in an expanding domain name system," he said.
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