Draft Report: Rights Protection Mechanisms Review

Open Date

2 February 2015 23:59 UTC

Close Date

1 May 2015 23:59 UTC

Staff Report Due

29 May 2015 23:59 UTC

Comments Closed

Report of Public Comments

View Comments

Brief Overview

To provide an initial assessment of the effectiveness of the rights protection safeguards put in place to mitigate potential issues in the New gTLD Program.

Report of Public Comments

Section I: Description and Explanation

This paper is intended to provide an outline for an initial review of the effectiveness of the rights protection mechanisms established as safeguards in the New gTLD Program. Particularly, this paper will review the data and input collected in many of the key areas relating to protection of trademark rights in the domain name system, including the Trademark Clearinghouse, Uniform Rapid Suspension system, and Post-Delegation Dispute Resolution Procedures.

Section II: Background

ICANN staff has worked to compile and analyze quantitative and qualitative data on the usage of all rights protection mechanisms, including the Trademark Clearinghouse, Uniform Rapid Suspension system, and Post-Delegation Dispute Resolution Procedures. The data includes statistics reported by third-party service providers as well as feedback from users on the effectiveness of these processes to meet rights protection objectives.

This paper, as updated to incorporate feedback received during the public comment period, is intended to be available to inform the Issue Report requested by the GNSO as well as the independent review of Trademark Clearinghouse recommended by the GAC. In addition, this paper will serve as input to the Review Team on Competition, Consumer Trust, and Consumer Choice to be convened under Section 9.3 of the Affirmation of Commitments, charged with assessing the effectiveness of the safeguards developed for the New gTLD Program.