[comments-wgb] Feedback, Working Group B

["Jim Fellers" <jf55115@wt.net>]

Dear Working Group B,

My name is Jim Fellers, a graduate student at The University of Texas at Austin.  I have closely followed the activities
of Working Group B.  Thank you for the opportunity you've given for feedback.

My suggestion is very simple:

I believe the sunrise period open just to current trademark owners is exclusionary.  There are many of us currently
building businesses who have not formally trademarked under our respective ventures.

If, however, ICANN were to offer a sunrise period to ALL CURRENT DOMAIN NAME OWNERS to duplicate only their
currently-registered domains (at their option) under the new TLDs, the policy would be non-exclusionary and fair.

Additionally, many citizens have registered names in good faith that could be loosely interpreted to be a "variation" of
an existing trademark.  Imagine the owner of "farmer-in-the-dell.com" receiving a letter from Baker &Botts claiming
infringement against Dell Computer, without any hint or reference to computers on his site.  My point: If you give a
select number of sunrise participants an opportunity to register "variations" of their respective marks, who is to
objectively judge the interpretation of the variation?  I believe ICANN will be limiting opportunity for future
participants by adopting that policy.

My biggest fear, as a technician, is that an exclusionary gtld will emerge, open only to the biggest corporations.
Existing technology easily eliminates the need for an extension altogether.  If this technology is exclusively applied
only to holders of a particular gtld (ie. .tmk), then it's likely that to reach CocaCola you type CocaCola or Coke into
your browser, but to reach Fred's Carpet and Flooring you type in fredscarpetandflooring.something.  I know it's
eventually inevitable, but I'd like to delay it as long as I can.  It's more fun to see individuals and businesses
participating on a level playing field.

Thank you for your time.

Jim Fellers
Austin, Texas