Comments on Trademark Issues in new gTLDs made at Nairobi Public Forum
(Hong Xue, Chinese Domain Name Users Alliance)
Unlike the Clearing House and URS that have been subject to hard-thought community review and improvement, the present PDDRP proposal is basically intact since the IRT report. With respect to this very complicated and special trademark protection mechanism that may be applicable to both top and second level, substantive works are still badly needed to be done. The present judgment criteria are highly subjective and in a large part subject to the discretion of the expert panel. Furthermore, application of the procedure at the second level imputes an indirect liability on Registry. This may have serious chilling effect to drive the registry to monitor and supervise not only the domain name strings but the content of the websites that the domain names are used to prove their innocence. As a result, this will impose new restriction on registrants.