Francis Gurry,
WIPO deputy director-general (and a candidate to be director-general), made his comments after the Organization’s arbitration and mediation centre
revealed that it received a record number of complaints about cybersquatting last year.
ICANN, the organization that administers the internet, is due to launch a series of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) later this year, which will use non-English scripts.
But Gurry expressed concern about the plans: “It comes down to a question of quantity versus quality. If the stated purpose of new gTLDs is to increase choice and competition in domain registration services, due consideration must be given to ICANN’s core UDRP (Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy) principles during the policy development work and implementation plans.”
He added: “This is not just an issue of protecting rights of trade mark holders, but also an issue of the reliability of the addressing system of the internet in matching interested parties with authentic subjects.”
In 2007, 2,156 complaints alleging cybersquatting were filed with WIPO – an 18% increase over 2006 and a 48% increase over 2005 in the number of generic and country code top-level domain disputes.
In addition to the rising number of cases, WIPO also reported a jump in the number of respondent countries represented. These grew from 72 in 2000 to 96 in 2007, reflecting the increased availability of the internet around the world. The US, France and the UK remained the most frequent bases for complainants, while the US, the UK and China remained the most represented countries by respondent party.
Companies in the biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, banking and finance, internet and IT, retail and entertainment industries are most likely to be targeted by cybersquatters, according to the statistics. Pharmaceutical manufacturers remained the top filers under WIPO’s UDRP scheme due to what the Organization called “numerous permutations” of protected names registered for websites offering or linking to online sales of drugs.
The April issue of Managing IP includes an article by Elisa Cooper of MarkMonitor about ICANN’s latest domain name plans. Read it online at www.managingip.com next week.
