Public Comment

Public Comment is a vital part of our multistakeholder model. It provides a mechanism for stakeholders to have their opinions and recommendations formally and publicly documented. It is an opportunity for the ICANN community to effect change and improve policies and operations.

Name: Munir Suboh
Date: 12 Apr 2022
Summary of Submission

Efficiency. The UDRP system polices need to continue to be enhanced to include: 1) Domain names with clear infringement of other rights, such as copyrights, right of publicity and unfair competition resulted from bad faith conducts, ii) expedite the process of ruling in the UDRP complaints to ensure prompt remedies, iii) expand in the scope of panels to rule on other remedies claimed by the trademark owners, such as monetary remedies and compensations and refund of fees to the complainants, and iv) prompt enforcement of resolution and introduce to the policies (terms and conditions signed by registrars with ICANN) to limit the jurisdictions and choice of forums that are entitled to execute and/or hear appeals of decisions.

Addressing Abuse. The UDRP current system does not effectively address abusive registrations of domain names but those should be resolved by the registrars before escalating to the UDRP action, especially the very clear ones that contradict with existing rights for well-known marks owners as well as holders of registered rights at countries of interest. ICANN may consider i) adding a condition to the registrars to respond to all abuse reports filed by trademark owners within 48 hours, ii) proposing checklists of documents and prerequisite to report any abuse report to the registrar, such as certificate of trademark registration(s) for complainants in relevant classes, iii) sanctioning the registrars that refuse or neglect such abuse reports or do not follow the review of documents as per the proposed checklist, iv) obliging registrars to address the abuse report to the holder of the domain names and set a temporary lock on ownership transfer until the abuse report is finalized, v) obliging the registrar to reveal full details and background about the domain names registrants that proven to be abusive, vi) proposing and/or allow to registries to require undertaking/declaration of filing the abuse report based on genuine rights and case.