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You are here: Home / domain tasting / ICANN Investigating Domain Tasting

ICANN Investigating Domain Tasting

August 11, 2007 by Michele Neylon

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ICANN has announced that it is seeking input and feedback on the topic of domain tasting. (See their announcement for full details)

Interestingly enough Michael Gilmour published an article a couple of days ago covering the same topic – “Why domain tasting is great!“, which will probably raise a few hackles!

One point that in particular caught my eye:

Domains that are picked up in tasting that have TradeMark problems are already covered by relevant “give me back my domains” processes, either in or out of court. It’s the domain owners risk to keep TM domains.

While that may be fine for big corporates, it’s hardly palatable for smaller businesses that cannot afford to pay UDRP / WIPO fees plus the legal teams needed to prepare their cases.

If the copyright lobby can’t catch up to their TM domains shifting every few days then this process can be solved by the registry stepping in to “lock” domains at the registry rather than the registrar where most domain tasting is taking place

Err what now?

Registries can’t really do that, which is why they rely on WIPO / UDRP for most of the gtlds.

If everyone benefits who is screaming about domain tasting? The copyright/intellectual property lawyers are having real problems with domain tasting. By the time they manage to get their C&Ds and cases together the domain is no longer registered. It’s a moving target and no one to sue!

That might be the case if the domains in question aren’t getting any traffic, but if they are then they’re not going to be deleted by the registrar…
Traffic = revenue, which is why the tasters do it, or did I miss something?

Don’t get me wrong, he does raise some very valid points and he think he’s trying to provoke a reaction and debate more than anything else.

Filed Under: domain tasting, domainers, Domains, icann, registrants, registrars, registries, trademark

About Michele Neylon

Michele is founder and managing director of Irish domain registrar and hosting company Blacknight. Michele has been deeply involved in domain and internet policy discussions for more than a decade.
He also co-hosts the Technology.ie podcast.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. David Goldstein says

    August 13, 2007 at 6:37 am

    Why should it be up to me to register all the options on my domains to stop cybersquatting, or domain tasting of trademarks. Cybersquatters are a blight on the domain name industry. They serve no purpose. Besides, drawing an analogy, there are laws in place to stop crimes, for example murder, yet the state isn’t expected to do everything to ensure the crime does not happen. In the offline world, I’m not forced to register all possibilities of a trademark. Similarly, why should domain name owners who hold trademarks be forced to register all domain names to stop cybersquatters. You register a domain name that infringes on a trademark or similar. Tough. If someone complains, you know the rules, and if you don’t, again, tough.

  2. Whizzbang says

    August 13, 2007 at 1:22 pm

    Hi,
    There are some really good points raised here….and yes….I wrote the article at whizzbangsblog to provoke some discussion on the topic. I think that it’s important to push things out into the open and discuss them amongst the whole community.

    I’m just about to write a summary of the comments sent through to me….so it should be interesting to see the reaction.

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