The calm is over, and the storm may be about to begin. Congress is back from recess and not one but two Congressional Committees are about to hone in on the implications of the NTIA’s March 14th announcement of its intention to surrender its IANA functions contract counterparty status with ICANN by September 2015. Meantime, an exhausting ICANN m...

The NTIA has just announced that it plans to turn its IANA functions contract counterparty role over to “the global multistakeholder community” when the current contract expires at the end of September 2015. read more

ICA Counsel Philip Corwin has been asked to speak at “ICANN and Global Internet Governance: The Road to São Paulo, and Beyond”, a program being held on Friday, March 21st in Singapore just before the start of the first ICANN meeting of the year. The full day program is being sponsored by ICANN’s Non-Commercial Users Constituency (NCUC). Corwin will...

Number one domain name registrar GoDaddy has been hit by another trademark infringement lawsuit. Earlier this month GoDaddy failed in its efforts to recuse U.S. District Court Judge Audrey Collins from presiding over a case brought against it by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.[i] The litigation alleges that GoDaddy committed cybers...

Controversy continues to build in Washington, DC regarding an online campaign against Democratic candidates for the House being conducted by the National Republican Campaign Committee. As just reported by National Journal, the NRCC recently adjusted the arguably misleading series of websites and “changed the donation page to make clearer to potenti...

A German court has reached the rather startling conclusion that a domain registrar can be held responsible for alleged copyright infringement at a website even though its only contact with it was to perform the original domain registration. read more

While it took three months, ICANN recently responded to the Business Constituency’s fall 2013 letter raising questions about the UDRP Status Report issued the day after the conclusion of the July 2013 Durban ICANN meeting. In a key clarification, ICANN’s response concedes that the Report does not predetermine the outcome of UDRP reform efforts slat...

The Internet Commerce Association and the Domain Name Association will be represented together at a Breakout Panel Session during the NamesCon domain industry conference slated to take place next week in Las Vegas. ICA Counsel Philip Corwin and DNA Executive Director Kurt Pritz will be the two speakers at “Your Voice in the New Marketplace: TheDNA....

Details are starting to emerge about the Brazilian meeting on Internet Governance scheduled to take place in Sao Paulo this coming April, and they make it clear that the Brazilian host is in firm control and that governments and UN-affiliated International Governmental organizations will make up half the participants – with all the other business, ...

Yesterday ICA filed a letter that generally supported the GNSO Council’s recent and unanimously adopted Resolution on Protections for International Governmental and Non-Governmental Organizations (IGOs & INGOs). In particular, while supporting strong protections for exact matches of their full names at the top and second level of the DNS, we we...

Deloitte, the ICANN-appointed operator of the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH), has unilaterally decided that the complainant services side of the Trademark Claims Service will operate for an indefinite period, rather than the required 90-day period set by the consensus agreement of ICANN stakeholders regarding the implementation of new gTLD rights p...

On December 4th the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision that will reverberate for years to come in cybersquatting cases brought under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA). While the Court’s declaration that “the ACPA does not provide a cause of action for contributory cybersquatting” is important in itself, its dicta r...

The Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br) has issued an Announcement (http://www.nic.br/imprensa/releases/2013/rl-2013-62.htm) about planning for the Global Multistakeholder Meeting on Internet Governance that will take place in Sao Paulo on April 23-24, 2014. Extended discussion of the background developments leading up to the request mad...

The following remarks were delivered to ICANN’s Board and senior staff by ICA Counsel Philip Corwin during the Public Forum (http://buenosaires48.icann.org/en/schedule/thu-public-forum) held on the afternoon of Thursday, November 21st at the 48th ICANN meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina: read more

ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade told members of its GNSO Council in Buenos Aires this morning that his recent initiatives resulting in the recent Montevideo Statement on Internet governance and the spring 2014 meeting on this subject to be held in Brazil were sanctioned by a September 15th ICANN Board resolution that has been withheld from the public, but w...

Did you have any idea that registering idea.gifts might be a prohibited activity because some people think it’s more likely to be acquired by those seeking to mimic the International Development Association than by a new business start-up serving those Internet users searching for birthday gift ideas? Do you believe someone is more likely to regist...

The ICANN Public Comment process can be severely frustrating and unsatisfying, as proven once again by ICANN’s September 30th publication of final Rights Protection Mechanisms (RPMs) for new gTLD registries[1], just twelve days after the September 18th deadline for submitting written comments. The final RPMs include a completely unchanged Trademar...

ICANN’s Business Constituency (BC) has sent a letter[1] to ICANN’s CEO and Board Chairman expressing multiple concerns about the “UDRP Providers and Uniformity of Process – Status Report” issued by ICANN on July 19th, the day after the mid-year meeting in Durban concluded. The Report was issued without advance notice or opportunity for comment, and...

I generally write these posts in the third person because I am speaking for the ICA’s membership. But today I’m going to depart from that style and speak personally. Yesterday I received word that my application to become a member of the Internet Committee of the International Trademark Association had been approved, and that my two-year term will ...

Using the impending launch of new gTLDs as a rationale, The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA) has teamed up with the Council of Better Business Bureaus (BBB) to launch a month-long “‘Know Your Net’ gTLD public awareness campaign”[1]. Their goal is to enact amendments to the U.S. Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) that woul...

ICA has just submitted its comments (http://forum.icann.org/lists/comments-rpm-requirements-06aug13/msg000 57.html) to ICANN regarding Rights Protection Mechanism (RPM) Requirements at new gTLDs. Our comments focus on serious shortcomings in the current text of the Trademark Notice (TN) that will be generated by some attempted domain registrations. ...

During its August 22nd meeting the ICANN Board approved renewal of the registry agreements for the incumbent .Biz, .Info, and .Org gTLD registries. All three contracts were adopted in the identical form to the drafts published for public comment earlier this year[1]. In taking that action the Board did not adopt the suggestion of ICANN’s Intellectu...

ICANN’s Board meets today, and included on its Consent Agenda is approval of the revised registry contracts for .Biz, .Info, and .Org. ICA saw nothing in the proposed revisions to warrant comment – until we recently became aware that the Intellectual Property Constituency (IPC) had made the immodest suggestion that all three agreements be amended t...

There’s an old joke that only two economists in the entire world actually know what they are talking about – and that they disagree! Apparently something similar holds true for ICANN string confusion experts. Except rather than being asked to prescribe the best policy mix or project the future performance of highly complex economic systems, they ar...

The Legal Rights Objection (LRO) mechanism administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on behalf of ICANN is starting to look like the reverse FISA Court of domain name system (DNS) rights protection mechanisms (RPMs) at the top level. In FISA Court, the government always wins – at WIPO, the LRO complainant always loses. rea...

On July 18th the Senate Appropriations Committee issued Report 113–78 on S. 1329, the “DEPARTMENTS OF COMMERCE AND JUSTICE, AND SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS BILL, 2014”. The Report contains language that is harshly critical of the role played by the National Telecommunications and Information Agency (NTIA) within ICANN’s Governmenta...

The following consist of a prepared statement delivered by ICA Counsel Philip Corwin at the ICANN Public Forum in Durban today, plus the raw transcript of the subsequent interchange --- Good afternoon. Philip Corwin, Counsel to the Internet Commerce Association. Several weeks ago CEO Chehade stated that domain registrants were ICANN’s primary cus...

To our shock and dismay, ICANN staff today stated in Durban that it is not developing a standard and enforceable contract for Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) arbitration dispute providers, going back on its written statement of April that it was doing precisely that. read more

Members of the ICANN community assembled in Durban, South Africa were greatly surprised by announcement on the meeting’s first day that no less than five new strategy panels were being formed to “serve as an integral part of a framework for cross-community dialogue on strategic matters”. read more...

Durban is a lovely beach city on the Indian Ocean with idyllic winter weather, but you might as well be on Mars if you’re ensconced in the vast windowless meeting rooms of its International Conference Center. That’s where ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) spent a good part of Saturday, July 13th, engaged in a dialogue with the non-confl...

We got pretty excited recently when ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade said that registrants were ICANN’s primary customer[1] – but we must now curb our enthusiasm in light of the final treatment of registrants’ rights in the newly approved Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA). read more

ICANN’s Board approved the new Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) on June 27th, and its Resolution doing so noted that “the Board has accepted the GAC Advice in the Beijing Communiqué that the "the 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement should be finalized before any new gTLD contracts are approved.”" -- and cited as a “highlight” that “The 12...

ICANN held a briefing in Brussels on Tuesday, June 25th and ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade was the leadoff speaker. We’ve reviewed some detailed reports from those in attendance, and the most startling and refreshing statement made by CEO Chehade was that new gTLD applicants will be managed as ICANN’s licensees – that he regards the registrant/user as ICAN...

The White House has just released the “2013 JOINT STRATEGIC PLAN ON INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ENFORCEMENT” issued by the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC), and ICANN efforts are discussed at some length. The Report makes clear that U.S. activities within ICANN are regarded as an integral part of the government’s overall strategi...

ICA has been informed by ICANN Staff that the Working Group (WG) on the Locking of a Domain Name Subject to UDRP Proceedings appears to have settled on a recommendation that domain name registrants who are Respondents in a UDRP proceeding be granted an automatic right to request and be granted a four day extension of the deadline for filing their r...

The Internet Commerce Association (ICA) has endorsed and suggested additional improvements to the alternate statement of Registrants’ Rights and Responsibilities (RRR) proposed by ICANN’s Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group (NCSG). ICA’s comment was filed in regard to the “Proposed Final 2013 RAA” (Registrar Accreditation Agreement); the RRR is one c...

The Arab Center for Dispute Resolution (ACDR) has been approved as a UDRP provider by ICANN’s Board of Directors. However, the language of the Board resolution of approval leaves unresolved the critically important issue of whether all UDRP providers will be placed under a standard and enforceable contractual agreement. read more

Responding to questions posed by ICA Counsel Philip Corwin at the Public Forum in Beijing, ICANN is now on the record that it is developing a standard contract for all providers of the new Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) rights protection mechanism (RPM) for new gTLDs, and that more URS providers will be selected. This action sets a strong precedent...

On April 19, 2013 ICANN’s Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group (NCSG) filed a formal Request for Reconsideration with ICANN’s Board Governance Committee to review a unilateral staff decision to expand the scope of the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMC) claims service for new gTLDs. read more

ICA just told ICANN that we strongly oppose an Initial Report that proposes to effectively reduce the time that a registrant has to respond to a UDRP by up to one-third. read more

On the afternoon of Tuesday, April 9th, during ICANN’s 46th Public Meeting currently taking place in Beijing, China, ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade announced that, following 20 months of negotiations, “agreement in principle” had been reached on a new version of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) to be put into effect immediately for all new and i...

Several weeks ago, ICA intervened with ICANN’s Board to request that the revised application of the Arab Center for Dispute Resolution (ACDR) be withdrawn from its Consent Agenda and put out for public comment. (see http://internetcommerce.org/ACDR_UDRP). read more

ICANN’s institutional memory seems to be slipping, and that concerns us. read more

Domain registrants won’t be receiving UDRP notices from Amman, Jordan for at least a while. Last week ICA sent a letter to ICANN’s Board asking that it defer action on the pending proposal of the Arab Center for Dispute Resolution (ACDR) to be accredited as a UDRP arbitration provider and put its revised proposal out for public comment. On Thursday...

Yesterday we posted a February 26th letter that ICA sent to ICANN urgently requesting that the ICANN Board defer action at its February 28th meeting on the pending proposal of the Arab Center for Dispute Resolution (ACDR) to be accredited as a UDRP arbitration provider -- and that ICANN published ACDR’s revised proposal for public comment before ta...

Back in September 2010 ICANN invited public comment on the proposal of the Arab Center for Dispute Resolution (ACDR) of Amman, Jordan to become a UDRP arbitration provider. Most of the comments opposed approval or requested changes and clarifications. Nothing more was heard of the application – until it showed up on the Consent Agenda for the ICANN...

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ICA just filed a comment letter responding to a draft ICANN framework for determining what is policy and what is just implementation of existing policy. We’ll be the first to admit that the subject is dry, vague, and of general interest only to Internet policy wonks – but the answers are critically important to assuring that domain investors and re...

Domain Sherpa, a well-known website that features video interviews with domain investment industry leaders, has now made available an interview with ICA Counsel Philip Corwin. read more

Commentary on ICANN’s proposed “Strawman Solution” for the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH) is reaching impressive heights. With just a few hours remaining before the filing deadline eighty-three separate comments have been submitted on the proposal, and we imagine that a few more will trickle in before the inbox is closed. read more