Comments in Response to the Secretariat's Questionnaire on the Protection of Country Names in the Domain Name System
Danish reply to questions regarding country names
Question 1) How should the name of a country be identified (for example, by refer-ence 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
It has been suggested to use the United Nations Terminology Bulletin or the ISO Standad 3166. We do however feel that this would limit the scope of protection too much. The protection should in our point of view not be limited to the strictly official terms. The protection should also include other terms under which the country is know in wider circles, excluding however actual slang terms. This would also cover the short names
It would thus seem more appropriate to use a more general wording when defining the scope of the protection.
Question 2) In what languages should country names be protected?
The protection should not be limited to certain languages.
It would thus seem difficult to lay down criteria for selecting certain country names, which should be included in the protection. Using a more general wording as men-tioned above would solve this problem in so far that a more generally worded protec-tion could cover all languages.
Question 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 attitude of Denmark is that that the countries have a legitimate interest in having an exclusive right to use the their country name as a domain name.
The use of country names as domain names should therefore be strictly limited to official representatives of that country.
In light of this and the fact that no commercial entity should benefit solely from a country name Denmark feels that the protection should cover both existing and future domains.
Question 4) How should any alleged acquired rights be treated?
Denmark does not yet have a position on this question
Question 5) What mechanism should be used to implement protection (for example, the UDRP or some other mechanism)?
Denmark is of the view that the protection should be introduced through the UDRP. It would seem overly complicated to create a new legal instrument.
Question 6) Should any protection extend to the exact country name only or also to misleading variations?
In order to keep to protection of country names as easy to manage as possible Den-mark feels that the protection should be limited to identical words. Further the need to protect misleading terms does not seem as significant with country names as with trademarks.
Question 7) Should protection be absolute or should it be dependent upon a showing of bad faith?
As mentioned above Denmark feels that the countries have a legitimate interest in having an exclusive right to use the their country name as a domain name. In light of this the protection should not be limited to cases were bad faith can be shown.