All,

I want to keep today's NPOC Members call focused on the agreed agenda and don’t want to spend online call time on this issue now.
So, I am sharing a question I am working up for NPOC to put before the ICANN board. I will share the final version of the question and evidence here on npoc-discuss later.

The question is:

How can ICANN protect the integrity of the ownership of domain names when a growing number of multilateral treaty organizations have their own internal intellectual property dispute resolution processes and are not obliged to respect ICANN’s terms of ownership and dispute resolution processes?

The exhibit to illustrate this concern is the recent WTO dispute resolution panel (one person) who took the ownership of trumpcard.com (registered in 2009) and gave it to Donald Trump’s companies on the grounds that Donald Trump, the U.S. serial entrepreneur with gambline interests, registered "Trumpcard" as a trademark in 2011 – two years later. The trademark with for a credit card venture. Now trumpcard.com simply auto directs one’s browser to the creditcard application page.

The English word trumpcard, related to games of chance, has been in use for 700 years. The domain owner was using the trukmpcard.com site to direct players to various online gambling sites, and doing nothing illegal or contrary to ICANN terms ownership. If ICANN has no status in protecting the legitimate ownership of domain names, ICANN and domain name owners face a major problem.  I am hoping that the ICANN board will have a comment on this issue.

Sam Lanfranco, Chair
NPOC Policy Committee