ICANN looks to assess rights protection mechanisms

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is planning to assess the use and effectiveness of sunrise and trademark claims rights protection mechanisms.

In an announcement made yesterday, January 29, ICANN said it was seeking to identify suppliers that could develop and conduct surveys to assess the mechanisms.

The mechanisms are provided through ICANN’s Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH), a service which notifies rights owners when a domain name that matches a trademark recorded in the TMCH has been registered.

ICANN’s sunrise service provides priority access to rights owners to request domain names associated with their trademarks.

The trademark claims service notifies potential domain name registrants when they attempt to register a domain name that matches a trademark record, and then the rights owner after registration.

ICANN said that as the mechanisms have not been subject to policy review yet, no publicly available data measuring their effectiveness currently exists.

In 2016, a draft report from ICANN noted that few trademark owners were using the TMCH’s sunrise period services and that rights owners were rarely disputing registrations that include variations of their trademarks.