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WWF Pins Down A Cybersquatter; EU Fights For A Name
Although the World Wrestling Federation is better known for its brawn than brains, the entertainment company recently scored a big win in intellectual property.
Just a few weeks into the new year, a global body dedicated to preserving intellectual property declared the WWF the victor in a cybersquatting case.
Under a nascent World Intellectual Property Organization policy for resolving domain name disputes, the WWF quickly pinned down a cybersquatter who had registered wwf.com with Melbourne IT, an Australian Internet address registrar.
Luckily for WWF, the cybersquatter had asked WWF to pay $27,000 for its domain name just three days before the World Intellectual Property Organization released its new dispute resolution policy.
The WWF decided that an international group would have the legal know-how to deal with trademark law, and choose to take the dispute to WIPO to save it a costly, drawn-out court battle.
When WIPO ruled in favor of WWF, Ed Kaufman, senior vice president and general council of WWF, praised the new policy and declared that the days of the cybersquatter were numbered.
But industry observers say it's too soon to declare all-out victory for WIPO's dispute resolution policy. Even Francis Gurry, WIPO's assistant director general and legal council, acknowledged that this new way to resolve international squabbles over Internet addresses still is largely untested.
"We need a few more decisions to see where the limits of the procedure are located," he said.
Since the ruling in the WWF case, three more parties decided to take their domain-name grievances to the World Intellectual Property Organization for settlement. Gurry said that as more cases come to WIPO for settlement, he expects situations to arise that aren't as easily resolved. And that, he said, will be the true test of the international dispute policy.
A Name Of Their Own
Although the issue isn't tangled in cybersquatting cases, one of the first politically charged issues to emerge for country-code top-level domain names is the European Union's bid to get an ".eu" address. Just like moves toward a single currency in Europe, the .eu address would help unify member states and promote business. But it also falls under a grander vision to boost Europe's high-tech sector to better compete with the United States. For about a year, many in Europe's business interests complained that having to add country-specific letters to their Internet address was confusing. If they wanted to show their business had a general presence in Europe, they claimed a simple addition of a ".eu" would give them a stronger identity.
But the proposal is not without its critics who argue that because the European Union is a region, not a country, it shouldn't have a separate domain name.
To get the highly coveted ".eu," the International Organization for Standardization and the Internet Corporation For Assigned Names And Numbers (ICANN) must give the go ahead. So far, the International Organization for Standardization has reserved the dot-eu address, just in case anyone was planning to commandeer it. But the organization has stayed away from the business of deciding if the European Union should get the .eu suffix.
ICANN hasn't received any formal proposals for the .eu name and ICANN President Mike Roberts said that resolving issues, such as whether to add a .eu as a top-level domain, would take months to sort out.
Michael Heltzer, government relations manager for the International Trademark Association, said the addition of ".eu" is an issue his association will monitor and could present some sticky trademark issues.
"What trademark law will apply?," he asked rhetorically.
Heltzer worried that it could spark others pushing for regional names and would complicate trademark laws.
But Nigel Roberts, a representative on ICANN's Names Council, said efforts by countries to get their own domain name boils down to one simple truth.
"A top level domain is really an expression of identity," he said.
This is My Country
Although it's unlikely ICANN quickly will tackle those thornier identity debates, the ICANN board in March will take up the contentious issues over the control of country code names. Because the Internet's root server system is in U.S. hands, ICANN has some control over the multitude of country-specific domain names. Mike Roberts said there's been some grumbling about the way these domain names are handled by ICANN and some question whether certain domains are operated in the public interest.
One of those squabbles likely to come up at the ICANN meeting in Cairo, Egypt, this March centers around how much pull the country-code top level domains have on ICANN's board. Nigel Roberts said that despite contributing to ICANN's meager budget, there's no representation for these country-specific domains in ICANN.
And if the voices of country-codes don't get more clout, Nigel Roberts worried that country-code registrations would become an "instrument for global spin doctoring."
But if ICANN does resolve debates over ".eu" or other country code issues, it won't be for a long time coming, Mike Roberts said.
"We are not well down the path on this," he said.
- by Caroline Broder
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