[bc-gnso] Brokering Peace Between Brand Owners and Domainers

[Phil Corwin]

I know Saul Hansell from prior tech issues I worked on, and he was at Monday's event in NYC in large part because I made him aware of it and encouraged his attendance, suggesting it might make for a good story. As it worked out he got three good stories from it.

I thought his piece on the trademark issues was reasonably balanced, and only took issue with his final sentence, "I don't envy the Icann staff, which has to work out a compromise that will prevent the outbreak of a world war over domain names."

In response to that, I sent him this e-mail:
"Enjoyed your follow-up piece this morning. My only comment would be that it's not up to ICANN staff to broker a compromise -- if the URS is major new policy -- and our IRT comment letter lays out why we think it would almost entirely displace the UDRP at new gTLDs, and our view is backed up 100% by the comment letter submitted by the Chair of the GNSO -- then ICANN's rules call for a Policy Development Process in which the affected parties work out their own consensus. As I stated yesterday, ICA is ready and willing to constructively engage in a fast track process that addresses UDRP reform in a way that curbs abuses by both sides and applies the revised policy to all gTLDs, including .com."

Summing up, how this URS debate plays out will demonstrate whether ICANN really has a bottom up consensus policy process or whether it's been displaced by a staff-brokered policy process.


Philip S. Corwin 
Partner 
Butera & Andrews 
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Suite 500 
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"Luck is the residue of design." -- Branch Rickey

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-bc-gnso at icann.org [mailto:owner-bc-gnso at icann.org] On Behalf Of Chris Chaplow
Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 9:15 AM
To: bc-gnso at icann.org
Subject: [bc-gnso] Brokering Peace Between Brand Owners and Domainers


Good NYT article


http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/brokering-peace-between-brand-owner
s-and-domainers/



Chris Chaplow
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