Comments in Response to the Secretariat's Questionnaire on the Protection of Country Names in the Domain Name System
Subject: WIPO-SCT questions on geographical terms
Dear Sir,
The Standing Committee on the Law of Trademarks, Industrial Designs and Geographical Indications, held its first special session on the Report of the Second WIPO Internet Domain Name Process from 29 November to 4 December 2001.
On the subject of "Geographical Terms", the report notes that it was decided that delegations should be invited to submit comments on seven questions to the Secretariat before the end of February 2002 and that the Secretariat should prepare a paper on the basis of comments received for distribution before the Second Special Session and for consideration by that Session.
This letter contains the views of the Netherlands Administration on the seven questions that are formulated in the report of the first special session. Please find our opinion as expressed below on a question by question basis.
1) How should the name of a country be identified (for example, by reference to the United Nations Terminology Bulletin, ISO Standard 3166, or by some other method) and should both the long and short names of countries be protected?
The Netherlands Administration prefers the use of the United Nations Terminology Bulletin, and in addition the ISO Standard 3166-1 list, as the basic list for reference to country names. However, in many cases the use of the official written form of the names in these lists will not be appropriate for use in the Internet Domain Name System. Therefore it should be to the discretion of a country to supply a limited and stable list of names of the country.
Both the long (for example The Kingdom of the Netherlands) and short names (for example Netherlands) of the country should have a form of protection.
2) In what languages should country names be protected?
The country names should in any case be protected in the official national language(s) of the country concerned. Furthermore, taking into account the global character of the internet, it would be advised to use the official languages of the United Nations as a point of reference for worldwide protection.
3) To what domains should any protection be extended (for example, to all, both existing and future, gTLDs, only to future gTLDs, also to ccTLDs, etc.)?
The absolute protection (please refer also to question 7) should be extended to future gTLDs. This can probably be limited to those gTLDs that have a generic and (partly) non-commercial character. When determining whether a gTLD should be designated for the required protection the criteria should be applied from the global end users perspective. In general, policy and implementation of protection for names within a country code (ccTLD) resides within the competence of the government of the relevant country.
4) How should any alleged acquired rights be treated?
From the moment that new rules will be implemented all subsequent registrants can inform themselves on those rules. Therefore those registrants are informed on risk of withdrawal of their registered name(s). Acquired rights should be respected if the protection would be extended to existing TLDs.
5) What mechanism should be used to implement protection (for example, the UDRP or some other mechanism)?
The UDRP can be a useful mechanism for the implementation of protection for country names in general. However, in order to avoid specific problems with country names it would be even more effective to implement a means for (pre)registration of country names.
This pre-registration could be based on the list (please refer to question 1) provided by the relevant public authorities and that can be applied whenever a new relevant TLD will be opened.
This means that absolute protection could be implemented in the sunrise procedure. Protection for the names of countries in other languages and different spelling could be included in the UDRP (please refer to question 6).
6) Should any protection extend to the exact country name only or also to misleading variations?
The proposed (pre)registration of country names should be limited to the list of names provided by the relevant public authority.
In order to avoid very long list of names, a clear (pre)registration policy needs to be developed, clearly stating which names can be pre-registered and which not (please refer also to questions one and two). Misleading variations could be dealt with by the UDRP.
7) Should protection be absolute or should it be dependent upon a showing of bad faith?
The protection during the pre-registration period should be absolute. Protection for country names in the UDRP should be on showing a form of bad faith.
Yours sincerely,
The Vice-Minister for Telecommunications and Post,
on her behalf,
Director Information Infrastructure,
G.A.A.M. Broesterhuizen