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Domain Name Registration Related News

28th May, 2004

The World Intellectual Property Organization has determined its position on 'retrospectively registered' geographic domain names, making it more likely that existing registrants of domains such as 'southafrica.com' can keep hold of them.

Demys.net originally reported on the deliberations of the WIPO Standing Committee on the Law of Trademarks, Geographical Indications and Industrial Designs (SCT) in October last year when a position on geographic names had not been finalised. Since then, the SCT met in November 2002 and adopted a decision that the short and long names of States, as set out in the United Nations Terminology Bulletin, should be protected against identical and misleadingly similar registrations as domain names by persons unconnected with the constitutional authorities of the States concerned. The SCT recommended that this protection should be implemented through an amendment of the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) and should apply to all future registrations of domain names in the gTLDs. 

Francis Gurry, Assistant Director General and Legal Counsel for WIPO wrote to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names & Numbers (ICANN), the body responsible for the UDRP, in February this year to transmit this decision. As yet, no changes have been made to the Policy. In the meantime, however, domain name analysts have been watching for the final deliberation of the WIPO's SCT as this would determine whether countries would be allowed to make complaints regarding geographic domain names already registered by third parties, such as those in the recent cases involving New Zealand, on which Demys reported. 

The SCT met to deal with this question earlier this month. The meeting was attended by delegations from 79 member States, 3 intergovernmental organizations and 12 non-governmental organizations. According to WIPO, the decision was reached that the protection of country names should not be retrospective, although no reasoning or other details of the deliberations have been put forward. It appears that WIPO has not yet communicated this decision to ICANN.

Details at: http://www.demys.net/news/2003/05/28_co.htm