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Consultation Responses



Dispute Resolution Service

11 February 2001

Paul Cotton
SafetyNet Systems Ltd

Comments relating to the proposed DRS Policy.

   3. i

    A. primarily for the purposes of selling, renting or otherwise transferring the Domain Name to the Complainant or to a competitor of the Complainant, for valuable consideration in excess of the Respondent's documented out-of-pocket costs directly associated with acquiring or using the Domain Name;

    B. as a blocking registration against a name or mark in which the Complainant has rights;

    C. primarily for the purpose of disrupting the business of the Complainant; or

Generic/descriptive terms should be given explicit protection in the wording of the Policy given that a generic/descriptive trademark would only apply to a narrow trade type and there have been clearcut cases of the UDRP being used for a tm holder of a generic to obtain ownserhip of the domain on the basis of their narrow scoped tm - examples: traditions.com, crew.com, alloyrods.com, current.com etc.

There is scope for abuse of the above by any covetous trademark holder, as the idea of a "blocking" could be construed to be any registration that matches the trademark - e.g. the owner of apple.co.uk could be seen as blocking apple computers. Again it need to be explicitly worded to prevent the non uniform interpretations being witnessed with the UDRP.

It should also be explicitly noted that the sale of domains is not prohibited, nor illegal by itself and that the sale of a domain that matches the trademark comprising of a generic/descriptive term of another party is not by itself inherently contravening of this Policy.

This has been a major failing with the UDRP and one which I would hope Nominet would not replicate.

Comments relating to the procedure.

   6. a Reply by the complainant

    Within five (5) Days of receiving the response from us, the Complainant shall submit to us either a reply to the Respondent's response, which shall not exceed 1000 words, or Form A if the Complainant does not intend to reply to the response. If the Complainant does not submit either a reply or Form A to us within five (5) Days we will deem the complaint to be withdrawn. This will not prevent the Complainant submitting a different complaint to us.

I thoroughly disagree with allowing the complainant to have the final say in a dispute. The domain registrant should be treated as innocent until PROVEN guilty, and allowing a complainant to make final unchallengeable statements is poor judgement and will be open to abuse by covetous parties.

   21. d

    The applicable fees for the submission of an appeal are £3,000 + VAT.

That is a completely rediculous fee and would be prohibitive to many wronged parties. Given that appeals may be brought due to negligence by the appointed expert, why should they have to pay to have a poor decision overturned?

I believe Nominet has a duty to protect its customers and should look at this from their perspective as well the Intellectual Property perspective. The draft proposals seem biased heavily towards IP interests rather than the fair treatment of your customers.