[ga-udrp] Fw: (INTA-list) Study of 11,000+ .INFO Sunrise Registrations

["watchdog" <watch-dog@inreach.com>]

You gotta love it. Great job on that sunrise protection.

Chris McElroy aka NameCritic
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bob Connor" <conno001@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
To: <tmtopics@lists.inta.org>
Sent: Friday, August 31, 2001 11:14 AM
Subject: (INTA-list) Study of 11,000+ .INFO Sunrise Registrations


> TITLE: "Study of Over 11,000 .INFO Sunrise Registrations Analyzes
> Violations of Trademark Submission Rules"
>
> AUTHOR: Robert A. Connor, Ph.D.
>
> SOURCE: (c) 2001 DomeBase.com. May be reprinted or quoted with proper
> attribution. Contact: webmaster@DomeBase.com
>
> RELEASE: August 27, 2001, 9:30pm
>
> INTRODUCTION:
>
> .INFO is a new extension for internet domain names, like .COM and .NET,
> that has been authorized by ICANN and is being implemented by Afilias.
> For the registration start up, a "Sunrise Period" was designed to let
> trademark (TM) holders register their trademarked names before the
> general public gets a chance to register names. This helps to prevent
> "cybersquatters" -- people who register names trademarked by someone
> else and then try to sell them to the trademark holder.
>
> According to Afilias' Sunrise Period rules, someone applying for a
> Sunrise Period registration warrants that four conditions are met: (i)
> at the time of registration of the domain name, a current (non-expired)
> trademark or service mark registration was issued in the applicant's
> name; (ii) the domain name is identical to the textual or word elements
> of the trademark or service mark registration on which the registration
> of the domain name is based; (iii) the trademark or service mark
> registration on which the registration of the domain name is based is of
> national effect; and (iv) the trademark or service mark registration on
> which the registration of the domain name was based was issued prior to
> October 2, 2000.
>
> The Sunrise Period will be followed by a "Land Rush Period" which is
> open to the general public.  During the Land Rush, there is a randomized
> selection process to pick a winner when more than one person requests
> the same name. Thousands of people have paid to pre-register in the Land
> Rush period.  After the Land Rush period, registrations will be on a
> first-come, first-serve basis.
>
> SUNRISE REGISTRATIONS THAT VIOLATE THE RULES:
>
> In addition to legitimate trademark holders for whom the Sunrise Period
> was intended, "sunrise squatters" have registered non-trademarked .INFO
> names with fake trademark names and numbers, post-cutoff trademark
> dates, and other violations of the Sunrise Period rules.  Unless action
> is taken, names claimed by bogus Sunrise registrations will not be
> available for the Land Rush period, depriving people who paid to
> pre-register those names in the Land Rush period of their chance and
> investment.  Discussion of this issue can be found at
> http://forum.icann.org/newtldagmts.
>
> Some inconsistent Sunrise Period registrations may be due to computer
> processing errors or misunderstanding, not bad intent.  Some people have
> been surprised to see their registrations in the Sunrise Period and have
> asked to have them canceled.  However, other Sunrise registrations may
> be intentionally fraudulent.
>
> Sunrise Period registrations can be challenged.  Anyone can challenge a
> Sunrise Period registration by paying $295 to WIPO ($75 net cost after
> refund if successful).  However, a successful challenger does not get a
> non-trademarked name even if the original Sunrise registration is proven
> fraudulent. Thus, there is little incentive for individuals to challenge
> sunrise squatters for non-trademarked names.
>
> To help address this situation, Afilias announced on August 15th that
> they will review and challenge questionable Sunrise Period registrations
> after the challenge period is over.   However, such challenges would not
> be in time to release names for the Land Rush period, so people who
> pre-registered in the Land Rush period would still be cut out.  This
> situation could be corrected by the "DomeBase Proposal" outlined at
> http://www.DomeBase.com or the "Simple Solution" outlined at
> http://www.TheInternetChallenge.
>
> PURPOSE OF THIS STUDY
>
> This large-scale study of over 11,000 Sunrise registrations is
> important for identifying the size of the sunrise squatting problem,
> classifying the types of violations, and developing ways to correct the
> problem.  This study is based on .INFO WHOIS records that are
> publicly-available at the Afilias website.  Anyone can look up
> information on a registered .INFO name by going to
> http://www.Afilias.com and using the WHOIS search.
>
> This study was conducted by Robert A. Connor, Ph.D., webmaster of
> DomeBase.com and Associate Professor at the Carlson School of Management
> at the University of Minnesota.  He alone is responsible for its content
> and welcomes feedback on how to improve its accuracy at
> webmaster@DomeBase.com.
>
> As requested by Afilias last week, the results of this study were
> delayed until after the Sunrise Period so that potential sunrise
> squatters would not know what types of fraud-detection algorithms are
> being used and submit registrations that evade detection.
>
> It is important to note that not all Sunrise registrations whose WHOIS
> records technically violate the Sunrise rules are really bad. Some WHOIS
> records for Sunrise registrations that are technically in violation of
> the Sunrise rules may be due to computer glitches or incorrect data
> entry or may be consistent with the spirit of the Sunrise rules.  For
> this reason, this study employed limited manual review as well as
> automated rule compliance algorithms.
>
> On the other hand, not all Sunrise registrations that escape detection
> using compliance algorithms are valid trademark registrations. Some
> WHOIS records for Sunrise registrations that escape detection using
> simple compliance algorithms may have apparently valid, but actually
> fraudulent, trademark information.
> For these reasons, this study does not produce a definitive list of bad
> registrations.  It does, however, provide useful information to start
> large-scale investigation, challenge and removal of inappropriate
> Sunrise registrations.  Thorough evaluation of the validity of thousands
> of Sunrise registrations will be will be a huge job.
>
> This study quantifies the frequencies of different types of
> inconsistency with Afilias' Sunrise rules.  Several of the WHOIS fields
> had missing or poor quality data, probably due to lack of edit checks at
> the time of data entry.  This required more complicated algorithms
> incorporating data checks and made the analysis more difficult.
>
> RESULTS OF THIS STUDY
>
> The following are the types and frequencies of inconsistencies and
> probable inconsistencies with Sunrise Period rule based on information
> in the WHOIS records.  Since one record can have more than one type of
> inconsistency, the percentages given for specific types of inconsistency
> overlap.  However, the overall percentages given at the end exclude
> overlap.
>
> BAD TM NAME: Approximately 6% of the Sunrise registrations had a missing
> or bad trademark name -- such as a blank, "?", "n/a", "none", "US", or
> the registrant's personal non-trademarked name.  An additional 4% had
> "trademark example" listed as trademark which, even if a computer
> glitch, provides no genuine trademark name information to be checked.
> One interesting example is the registration for VIENNA.INFO which says
> "no trademark!" in the trademark field.
>
> NON-IDENTICAL TM: Approximately 12% had a domain name that was not
> identical to the trademark name as required by the Sunrise rules -- even
> after generous adjustments for variations in hyphens, spaces, other
> non-alpha characters, various company designation suffixes in different
> languages, and other plausible variations.  For example, the trademark
> "dumping" was used to register CAR.INFO, MUSIC.INFO and CALL.INFO.  The
> trademark name, number, and date used register the site for trademark
> law -- "TMLAW.INFO" -- are "n/a", "n/a", and 2001-01-01.
>
> BAD TM NUMBER: Approximately 11% of the registrations had a missing/bad
> trademark number.  These cases included missing value, "unknown", "n/a",
> "common law", "applied", "US", "0", "123456789", "99999999", or "e.g.
> 12345".  For example, the trademark number given for "BIBLE.INFO" is
> "1". While this may be symbolically appropriate, it does not match
> information at the US Trademark and Patent Office.  As of the release of
> this article, the author was not able to confirm the validity of the
> trademark numbers "12345-14" for "BUSH.INFO" and would like to suggest a
> recount.
>
> DUPLICATE REGISTRATION FOR SAME TM: 21% had more than one domain name
> for the same trademark number.  If domain name A is identical to
> trademark name B, and domain name C is different than domain name A,
> then how can domain name C be identical to trademark name B? Registering
> domain names that are subsets of a trademark is not consistent with the
> Sunrise rules. For example, if someone has a trademark on "The Best
> Place in the World to Find a Home or get a Job", one should not be able
> to register domain names for BEST.INFO, PLACE.INFO, WORLD.INFO,
> FIND.INFO, HOME.INFO, GET.INFO, and JOB.INFO.  Some registrants
> registered scores of domain names with the same trademark number.
> CHILD.INFO and NUDE.INFO were both registered with the same trademark
> number, as were JEWISH.INFO and KKK.INFO.
>
> DATE AFTER CUT-OFF: 7% had a trademark date after October 2, 2000,
> including many for the year 2040, 39 years in the future.  Another 16%
> had a trademark date of October 1, 2000.  This was a Sunday and probably
> not a valid trademark start date. Another 2% and 3% had identical
> trademark dates, including trademark dates for computer-related domain
> names dating back to 1899. Even if some of these science fiction dates
> are due to computer glitches, they remain serious problems because lack
> of valid data confounds checks on trademark validity.
>
> ***.INFO TRADEMARKS: 3% used a trademark for "***info" to register
> "***.INFO" where "***" is a generic word.  This games the trademark
> system to lock in generic .INFO domain names before anyone else has a
> shot at registering them.  If I anticipate that ICANN will be coming out
> with a new extension .SHOP, is it proper for me to lock up the entire
> domain space years in advance by going to some non-english country and
> trademarking all the words in the english dictionary followed by the
> four letters "shop"?  One other observation about suffixes.  Some people
> used "***.com" (without a trademark for "***") as the trademark to
> register "***.info."  If this is allowed, then new top level suffixes do
> not expand access to internet names as intended, but rather just
> duplicate the roster of .COM registrants.
>
> Registrations with inconsistencies identified by the above criteria were
> compiled and then received limited manual review for reasonableness.
> This manual review resulted in 26% being judged plausible and removed
> from the inconsistent list.
>
> We first used conservative criteria to identify Sunrise rule violations,
> counting only records which had one or more of the following problems
> and which had not been removed as plausible through manual review: BAD
> TM NAME (excluding "Trademark Example)"; NON-IDENTICAL TM (after
> generous adjustments); BAD TM NUMBER; DUPLICATE REGISTRATION FOR SAME
> TM; or DATE AFTER CUT-OFF.  This resulted in 16% of Sunrise
> Registrations.
>
> We then used more liberal criteria to identify Sunrise rule violations,
> counting all of the records in the conservative approach, plus those
> which had one or more of the following problems and which had not been
> removed as plausible through manual review: TRADEMARK of "Trademark
> Example"; DATE OF 2000-10-01, 1995-05-06, OR 1899-12-30; and ***.INFO
> TRADEMARKS.  This resulted in 23% of Sunrise Registrations.
>
> These percentages are lower than those reported anecdotally for small
> samples of the most valuable names.  Some Land Rush participants have
> reported that almost all of the names that they pre-registered have been
> taken by Sunrise squatters.  This is because the more popular names are
> more likely to be targeted by sunrise squatters.
>
> Overall, we estimate that the percentage of Sunrise Registrations that
> violate the trademark submission rules is between 15% and 25%. With tens
> of thousands of Sunrise registrations in total, adequate review through
> WIPO challenges could require thousands of challenges at a cost of
> millions of dollars. The cost of WIPO challenges can be subsidized by
> Afilias using registration fees received from Sunrise squatters.
>
> CONCLUSION:
>
> Sunrise squatters are a serious problem, probably affecting between
> 15%-25% of Sunrise registrations.  WIPO challenge fees to adequately
> address them might be in the millions of dollars.  Algorithms to detect
> fraud are a useful first step, but are not sufficient.  Sorting through
> thousands of registrations to determine will validity be very labor
> intensive, especially with the incomplete and inconsistent registration
> data.  Unless these problems can be thoroughly corrected, use of Sunrise
> Periods in future top level domain names may be in doubt.
> --
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