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The ICANN Board has just approved the release of new IDN ccTLD domain names, while at the same time allowing for the creation of the controversial .xxx domain names.

The IDN ccTLD domain names approved by ICANN are:

• CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center)
• HKIRC (Hong Kong Internet Registration Corporation Limited)
• TWNIC (Taiwan Network Information Center).

Speaking during the ICANN 38 meeting, ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom announced that:

“One fifth of the world speaks Chinese and that means we just increased the potential online accessibility for roughly a billion people.”

This announcement comes hot on the heels of the recent release of the Russian and Arabic IDN ccTLD, which we announced with great fanfare.

The contraversial .xxx domain was allowed to pass with ICANN saying:

The ICANN board also voted to allow the application for the controversial .XXX top-level domain (TLD) to move forward. The ICM registry applied for the .XXX sponsored top-level domain as a potential community site for the adult entertainment industry. The Board approved a detailed set of next steps for the application, including expedited due diligence, negotiations on a draft registry agreement, and consultation with ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee.

The .xxx domain was first mooted in 2000 as a dedicated domain for the Adult industry, but fierce debate from supporters and detractors has raged since then. In 2007 the ICANN Board rejected a proposal to progress the .xxx, but in more recent times members of the ICANN board have expressed support for it, which has resulted in its return as a prominent issue.

Members of the Adult industry had feared that while the .xxx is descriptive of their businesses, that mandatory use of this TLD would isolated Adult websites.

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Doctor’s Associates Inc, which operate and franchise Subway stores, is red faced after losing a domain name dispute over MySubwayRewards.com.

The recent decision is a set back for the sandwich chain as they may have lost the battle due to their lawyers failing to do their homework. The Panel held that Subway’s lawyers failed to provide enough evidence to prove that the website was confusingly similar to the SUBWAY trade marks. They provided no explanation or argument as to why the phrase “mysubwayrewards” in the domain name may be confused with the mark SUBWAY.

This seems like an easy enough thing to do right? But it appears that the lawyers got lazy and assumed that they already had the cat in the bag by identifying the name as confusing. They omitted to then take the necessary step of proving how and why.

The Panel highlighted that due to the fact that the word SUBWAY was bracketed between other words which could quite conceivably be used in combination to convey a meaning unassociated with the SUBWAY mark, it becomes necessary to sufficiently demonstrate identity or confusing similarity to the trademark at issue.

This is an example which shows why trademark and domain name owners should carefully select lawyers who understand the UDRP and auDRP processes, and who regularly undertake this type of work, like Cooper Mills Lawyers.

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A Sedo domain market study has confirmed a record sale of domain names in this year’s first quarter, in which close to 12 000 domain names were sold via the Sedo marketplace. These sales take the record for the highest selling quarter with an 18.6 percent increase from Q4 of 2009.

The Sedo study has indicated a swell in generic (gTLDs) and country code Top Lop Level Domains (ccTLDs). Sedo believes that the growth in the domain name market over the last quarter is due to an increase in market spending among larger corporations and the introduction of one and two-character domains and IDN domains that use a non-Roman script.

Closer to home, secondary domain markets have developed in the .au space with both Drop.com.au and Netfleet.com.au leading the way in sales which are achieving record prices. Drop.com.au shows domain sales as high as $18,000 for carparts.com.au while Netfleet achieved $6000 for graphicdesign.com.au.

Sedo is expecting a rise in sales to continue over 2010 as it believes that companies are starting to understand the critical role a domain name strategy plays in driving a successful marketing campaign.  Many large companies are investing heavily in branding and domain name sales. The study also highlights the importance for trademark owners to get in quickly and take action to protect brands.

Cooper Mills Director and Technology Lawyer Erhan Karabardak believes that the market will continue to grow and achieve higher prices, he says that:

“With the end of the Global Financial Crisis, marketing budgets are increasing and companies are becoming more active with their online sales and marketing strategies which are key in the increasingly competitive market place.“

Tags: domain law, domain name law, domain name lawyer, IT Lawyer, technology lawyer
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ICANN has announced that domain names will now appear in Arabic Script, as part of the move to non-latin domain names.

Since November of last year ICANN has received 21 requests for top-level domains (TLDs) through its Fast Track Process, representing 11 different languages, however ICANN has chosen Arabic as the first Non- Latin script as it is one of the most widely-used on the internet today. Other non latin language requests have come from China, India and Russia to name a few.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have been chosen as the first three regions that will be able to use country-code specific TLDs. Addresses for regional domain names in these countries can be found by using native language characters. Egypt has been the first to create a domain name using Arabic characters. The domain name .misr, which is the Arabic word for Egypt, will be spelled out in Arabic script.

ICANN expects that the introduction of domain names in Arabic script will make a surge in the number of internet users in the Arab speaking world and will enable Internet services to penetrate into new market segments by eliminating language barriers.

Tags: arabic domain names, domain law, domain name law, domain name lawyer, domain name lawyers, ICANN, non latin domain names
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In a surprising development, the Kentucky Supreme Court has reversed an earlier  Kentucky Court of Appeal ruling which had overturned a forfeiture order of 141 gaming related domain names.

The Supreme Court decision was made on a technical basis, that the parties appearing before the court had no standing. The Court highlighted that “writs are to be granted only as an extraordinary remedy, and certainly only when parties have demonstrated a concrete interest before the court.” The two groups appearing before the court as appellants were, the domain names and gaming associations, iMEGA and IGC representing anonymous domain registrants. The standing of these parties has been contested from the beginning of the matter, as Justice Noble stated “that the Commonwealth has challenged the standing of these individual domain names at every stage of the proceeding”.

Despite the Court holding that many of the arguments presented  by the domain names, and gaming associations were compelling and had merit, they could not be considered until a party with standing steps forward to defend them.

The ‘domain names’ were denied standing as the Court upheld the classic view that in order to have standing in a dispute involving property, you must own, or have an interest in the property.  The Court was of the view that the property does not have an interest in itself, and therefore, does not have any interest in the litigation.

iMEGA and IGC both claimed to represent registrants of some of the seized domains under the doctrine of associational trading. However both parties refused to reveal which registrants they were representing, without which, associated trading could not be achieved. The court took the hard line approach that “…the associations had every opportunity to cure their standing defects by identifying their seized members, in fact they were ordered to do so by the Franklin Circuit Court.  Refusing to follow this requirement, the associations do not have standing”.

However failure by both parties to establish standing in this writ action does not completely shut out relief by way of writ in the future. The Supreme Court explicitly noted that ”[i]f a party that can properly establish standing comes forward, the writ petition giving rise to these proceedings could be re-filed with the Court of Appeals.”

It appears the matter will not be put to rest just yet, as there is the possibility of one or more of the actual domain owners initiating proceedings which challenge the original order against them.  The gaming associations can also come forward with the names of one or more of the registrants they are representing to reinstate the case.

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In a judgment released by the Supreme Court of Kentucky on 18 March 2010, the decision of the Kentucky Court of Appeal, which found in favour of the domain owners, was overturned.

More to follow.

Tags: domain law, domain name law, domain name lawyer, domain name lawyers, domain names, IT Lawyer, Kentucky Domain Seizures
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