Actually, I might just explain on Philip's initial comment. The "typical motivations" of business uses are very broad, and first and foremost, involves using the names that we, as business users, register to communicate with customers, market products, provide customer service, provide actual products to users, manage our own internal communications, etc. etc. :-)

One motivation of some business users, from time to time, is to take defensive registration, when compelled to do so, to ensure against customer/user confusion and misleading communications, trademark infringement, protect against misuse of a domain name that is similar to a service or trademark use, etc. Bad faith is one critical concern of business users. But their interests are varied, just as their business models, strategy, and "reach" and products/services are. :-)

As to ICANN's role in ensuring a stable and predictable environment in the Internet's technical functioning, we may have differences about how to achieve that, or the exact scope, but it is a primary concern to business users.

Marilyn S. Cade
AT&T Law & Government Affairs
1120 20th Street, NW, Suite 1000N
Washington, DC 20036

202-457-2106v
281-664-9731 e-fax
202-360-1196 c
mcade@att.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Philip Sheppard [mailto:philip.sheppard@aim.be]
Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 3:26 AM
To: council@gnso.icann.org
Subject: [council] NCUC statement on Approval Process for Registry Services

Marc,

while I think there is much to commend in the NCUC statement on the registry services I feel impelled to make one remark to this part of your statement:

" we note that ICANN invested most of its effort in protecting trademarks ... interests, and has shown very little interest in protecting consumers and users".

ICANN's UDRP is all about protecting consumers and users. The typical motivation for a brand owner to seek ownership of a domain name is to prevent the bad faith use of the domain name. Bad faith use includes consumer fraud and deception. There maybe individual cases where other motivations are apparent but please do note that the fundamental reason for trademarks at all is as a guarantee of origin - and that is a consumer as well as a brand-owner benefit.

Philip