ICANN sent out a news alert yesterday calling for volunteers to participate on a new working group that will be created to “Review all Rights Protections Mechanisms in all generic top-level domains.” Among other things, this working group will be tasked with potentially overhauling the UDRP and URS procedures. This could have major ramifications for domain investors and domain name portfolio operators.
A week ago, Phil Corwin from the Internet Commerce Association wrote an article on CircleID about the importance of this working group and the impact its findings and recommendations may have on domain owners and domain investors. Phil also published an informative blog post about the working group on the ICA’s website. You should read both of these articles to get a better idea of why members of the domain investment community should consider participating on this working group.
Phil also commented to me about the importance in having solid representation among domain investors within this working group:
“These reviews, first of the new gTLD RPMs, followed by the first-ever review of the UDRP, may result in important changes to the treatment of domains within trademark law and ICANN rights protection processes. And those changes, once made, will probably last for at least a decade or two without further alteration. So anyone with an interest in registrant rights and domain valuations has a stake in their outcome.”
Nat Cohen, a board member at the ICA and the founder of Telepathy, Inc. a company that has had to repeatedly defend its descriptive domain name assets in UDRP proceedings, also