ICA teams up with WIPO on UDRP reform

The Internet Commerce Association and WIPO are jointly chairing an off-the-books review of the UDRP, ahead of a likely ICANN review of the anti-cybersquatting policy next year.

WIPO said today that the review is being coordinated by Brian Beckham of WIPO and Zak Muscovitch of the ICA, and comprises another 16 participants, mostly UDRP lawyers, panelists, and WIPO itself.

ICANN is being represented by director Sarah Deutsch. Domainers are represented by Telepathy’s Nat Cohen. The brand owner representative is Mette Andersen of regular UDRP complainant Lego.

The team is also drawing on the expertise of a couple dozen experts, a who’s who drawn from all sectors of the industry from registrars to domainers to IP interests to the UDRP providers themselves.

The composition looks very much like what an ICANN policy working group on this topic would look like, but the talks are being held outside of the usual policy development process.

WIPO says: “The core aim of this project is to maintain the UDRP as an efficient and predictable out-of-court dispute resolution mechanism for clear trademark-based disputes.”

But the organization seems to be engaging in some expectation management aimed at those who believe UDRP needs to be gutted. WIPO said:

Any recommendations should be borne out by a demonstrated compelling need for a change, and must be considered against this background, as any perceived case-specific or anecdotal faults of the UDRP do not warrant a wholesale revision of this industry best practice.

The group is expected to produce a report early next year for public input, and share a final report with ICANN thereafter, when the GNSO community is expected to kick off its owner formal Policy Development Process looking at UDRP.

UDRP review has been on the back-burner for the last couple of years since an initial public comment period, mainly due to workload issues faced by ICANN staff and community volunteers.

The GNSO was expected to open its PDP preparations more or less now, but the GNSO Council is expected to vote this Thursday to delay the start of the project for another six months, due to delays implementing other rights protection mechanism reviews.

Given how long PDPs typically take, by my estimate you’re looking at at least three years before any changes to UDRP are approved.

If you find this post or this blog useful or interestjng, please support Domain Incite, the independent source of news, analysis and opinion for the domain name industry and ICANN community.

Tagged: cybersquatting, ica, ICANN, trademarks, udrp, wipo