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 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.