Trademark Claims Recommendation #6
- Ariel Liang
Trademark Claims Recommendation #6 In the absence of wide support for a change to the status quo, the Working Group recommends that the current exact matching criteria for the Claims Notice be maintained. |
Context:
The Working Group had diverging opinions on whether:
- The exact match requirement is serving the intended purposes of the Trademark Claims service;
- There is evidence of harm under the existing system of exact match;
- The matching criteria for the Claims Notice should be expanded.
The Working Group note in this Google Doc[1] provides details of these discussions.
The Working Group believes that the exact match criteria has already struck the proper balance of deterring bad-faith registrations but not good-faith domain name applications. The proper balance can be enhanced by a well-crafted Claims Notice that appropriately notifies prospective registrants about a potential problem with their chosen domain name, employs clear/concise/informative language, and avoids a potential overflow of false positives. Therefore, instead of proposing any changes to the matching criteria for the Claims Notice, the Working Group proposed Trademark Claims Recommendation #1 above.
[1] https://docs.google.com/document/d/10quBC1BnuIM_wOyEXH7TttNWEOrDTiPNscgSBd7QFXg/edit?usp=sharing