browse comments: WIPO RFC-1

WIPO RFC-1
clive@ina.com.au
Mon, 24 Aug 1998 05:38:30 -0400

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We are the registrar for com.au in Australia. We currently have over 50,000 business that have registered with us. Nearly everyday we hare involved in the issue of IP. There are generally 3 cases that occur in Australia

1. A person or Organisation requests a Domain name and is unaware of any possible infringement that they are involved in
2. A person or Organisation intentionally registers a name for the purpose of wanting to sell this to the owner of the Trademark
3. A person or Organisation requests a domain name where they are the owners of the Trademark in only one class and where there are several OTHER owners in other classes.

Currently we are the ONLY registrar in the world that checks a Trademark database for possible infringement( we check the Australian Trademarks database) . We inform the customer that there are possible infringements. If the customer after receiving our warning still wants to proceed then we ask them to sign a warranty accepting full responsibility for their actions.
We don't believe that it is the job of the Domain Name Registrar to determine who the is the rightful owner of the trademark. We believe that this should be determined either out of court between the parties or determined in a court.
Registrars do not have the skill or the necessary legal authority to get involved. It would be good if WIPO developed an International Database that allowed Registrars to interrogate and provide the early warning to the applicant . The next step would be to have the details of the Owner of the Trade mark so that at the time of application Registrars could inform BOTH parties ie Domain name applicant and Owner of Trademark. This would be the ideal. Then the two parties could resolve the issues . This leads to a dispute resolution process.

Both parties need to be able to resolve this at the least expense. A web based arbitration process would work . But the end customer who is NOT an owner of the Trademark would have to feel comfortable that they are being adequately represented and having WIPO only as part of the process would bias this in favour of IP owners.

Clive Flory
General Manager - Internet Names Australia
clive@ina.com.au

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