The deadline for public comments to the second version of the Draft Applicant Guidebook was Monday. In a letter signed by 100 companies, including 3M, BBC Worldwide, eBay, Ford Motor, Microsoft, Paramount Pictures, Viacom and Visa, MarkMonitor president and CEO, Irfan Salim, said that the plan still poses major risks to IP owners.
Although he commended ICANN for making changes to the first version of its Draft Applicant Guidebook, such as creating an implementation recommendation team to specifically address trade mark protection problems posed by the gTLD expansion, Salim’s letter went on to outline four major issues.
These relate to the significant risk the plan poses to the health and safety of consumers; a lack of adequate consumer and rights holder safeguards to protect those parties from abuse in the new name space; potentially large economic impact on brand rights holders; and potential problems arising from ICANN’s short timeline for launching the scheme.
According to ICANN, the decision to open the gTLD application process to any user able to pay the $185,000 fee came in 2008 following 18 months of discussions with a range of stakeholders. ICANN argues that the expansion "will allow for more innovation, choice and change to the Internet's addressing system, now constrained by only 21 generic top-level domain names" and says that it will "promote competition in the domain-name marketplace while ensuring Internet security and stability".
But the trade mark community has come out strongly against the proposal, forcing ICANN to delay implementation. Earlier this month, a survey by domain name registrar Melbourne IT, found that a majority of brand owners who responded believe that new gTLDs will increase costs and confusion, although 14% still said they would pursue a gTLD for their business.
A recent report by MarkMonitor also indicated that cybersquatting continued to increase in 2008, and MarkMonitor’s Te Smith told Managing IP: "Unless ICANN builds protections in, we'd only see this abuse spread."
The company’s letter to ICANN on Monday reiterated that brand abuse and online fraud will likely "increase exponentially" with the gTLD expansion and said: "Consumers are the ultimate victims of these abuses and they suffer loss of their time, money and even health and safety.
The letter also highlighted several brand owner safeguards and protections that were not addressed by the second draft of the Guidebook, such as reconsideration of the Whois registry requirements and institution of rights protection mechanisms.
The economic impact the expansion will have on brand owners in a down economy was also stressed, and MarkMonitor recommended "a phased approach" to the introduction in order to mitigate the problem: "Stated simply, the introduction of these new gTLDs will put an undue cost burden on businesses that are already financially strapped."
A third draft of the Guidebook is expected at the next ICANN meeting, in Sydney, Australia in June.
