Thursday, September 30, 2010

ICANN Board Reduces URS Time Line

Sorry for the delay with regard to entries connected with the Trademark Clearinghouse and the dispute resolution policies for new top-level domains. Both personal and professional issues have consumed me such that taking the time to post on this blog has proven impossible. I should be up to speed now with a post soon with regard to the Trademark Clearinghouse, hopefully tomorrow.

Nevertheless, ICANN’s board retreat has concluded and the adopted board resolutions are available here. Relevant to the posts on this blog thus far are the resolutions under the subhead “Trademark Protection.” As you can see, the Board has reduced the time a domain registrant faced with a URS complaint has to respond from 20 days to 14 days, which dovetails with the time line outlined in the Final Report issued by the IRT. As I wrote below, the time to respond to the complaint was the primary difference between the URS time line outlined in the DAG and the URS time line outlined by the IRT.

The reduced time line will benefit trademark owners who file complaints under the URS, but I still believe that the primary problem with the URS is the word count limit. Trademark owners may gain a week under the next edition of the DAG, but the primary costs associated with filing a URS will remain the same, and will be largely the same as the external legal fees or internal opportunity costs as those associated with the UDRP, which provides a stronger remedy than the URS. If the check box forms proposed by the IRT are a non-starter, then the word count limit should be sharply reduced to 1000 words, as six fewer days is unlikely to encourage trademark owners to use the URS over the UDRP.

But this is covered ground. Next up: the Trademark Clearinghouse.