Nominet: 2013 in UK Domain Name Disputes

674 complaints handled and £6.55m in legal costs saved by Nominet’s award-winning Dispute Resolution Service in 2013.

 

[news release] A summary published today shows that the number of domain name disputes handled by Nominet fell by over 17% in 2013. The summary provides an overview of all the complaints that were filed with the organisation’s lauded Dispute Resolution Service (DRS) in 2013, including an analysis of the outcomes and trends compared to previous years now that all the complaints have been closed. Brands using the DRS in 2013 included Lego, Swarovski, Cash Converters, O2, Virgin, L’Oreal, Coast Fashions, Barclays and St Johns Ambulance.

Nominet established the DRS over 12 years ago to offer an efficient and transparent method of resolving disputes relating to .uk domain names which are administered by Nominet. The DRS seeks to settle disputes through mediation and, where this is not possible, through an independent expert decision.

To make a complaint through the DRS, you need to have rights (such as a trade mark) in a name which is the same as or similar to the domain name you are concerned about. The DRS can usually provide a quicker and cheaper resolution to disputes than going through the courts as this service is based on free, confidential mediation. In the event of deadlock, complainants can pay to appoint independent legal experts from a panel to make a full or summary decision. All the rulings made over the last 12 years have been made public via Nominet’s website.

In 2013, 674 domain disputes originating from 54 countries were filed with the DRS.

• The number of disputes filed with Nominet fell by over 17% compared with 2012, against a 2.7% increase in the number of domain names registered with Nominet in the same period
• Of the 674 cases, 437 (65%) progressed through the formal dispute resolution process.
  83 were resolved directly between the two parties, 87 were resolved by mediation, 177 were resolved as a result of an expert’s summary decision, 87 as a result of an expert’s full decision and three as a result of a decision by an appeal panel
• Using a conservative estimate of £15,000 per dispute in court costs and legal fees, the 437 cases that progressed to formal dispute resolution add up to an estimated £6.55 million pounds in avoided costs
• 369 cases, or 54.74% of the cases filed in 2013, resulted in a domain transfer
• The majority of complainants come from the UK, but the United States, Liechtenstein, France and Denmark complete the list of the top five complainants by country
• The majority of respondents also come from the UK, but the United States, China, Saint Kitts & Nevis and Germany complete the list of the top five respondents by country
• The average length of DRS cases is decreasing. Mediated cases took an average of 49 days to resolve in 2013, compared with 52 days in 2012. Expert decisions and appeals also took less time to complete in 2013
• The total number of complaints raised in 2013 represents less than one tenth of a per cent of the domains on the register at the end of the year

Some interesting cases in 2013:

• Hvidbro-Mitchell.co.uk

This centred on a dispute between an ex-husband and wife. The respondent was the ex-wife, who had registered a domain name using the new surname (Hvidbro-Mitchell) of her remarried ex-husband. The respondent used the site to criticise her ex-husband, leading to a complaint from his new wife, Mrs. Hvidbro-Mitchell, who said that she had the rights to the name. An initial expert decision dismissed the complaint and judged that the complainant had no enforceable rights over the name, despite its unusual nature. However, a later appeal judged that the site’s content made it an abusive registration and overturned the decision, with the domain name transferred to Mrs. Hvidbro-Mitchell.

• OpticalExpressRuinedMyLife.co.uk

This involved high street optician, Optical Express, who complained about the domain registration OpticalExpressRuinedMyLife.co.uk, a protest site about negative consequences of laser eye surgery. The DRS expert panel ruled against accusations from the complainant that the site was being funded by a competitor, and that commercial advertising on a related site made it an abusive registration. As a result, no action was taken and the domain registration remains in the respondent’s hands. This runs contrary to previous rulings that viewed commercial activity on a protest site as abusive, and highlights the importance of taking each case on its own merits.

Full decisions for both cases, as well as all other DRS cases for 2013, can be read online at the DRS section of the Nominet website.

“2013 was another interesting year for resolving domain disputes as we continued to see imaginative and challenging cases emerge through the DRS,” comments Nick Wenban-Smith, Senior Legal Counsel at Nominet. “The system continues to be a fantastic light-touch alternative to the courts in addressing these disputes, allowing the domain name system to remain fast-moving but fair, and contributing to the high level of trust in .uk websites. In a year when many new Top Level Domains are launching for the first time, brands need to recognise the value of a namespace which provides an established, robust and trusted framework for dealing with any domain disputes quickly and fairly.”

View the 2013 DRS summary.

-ENDS-

About Nominet

Domain names are one of the key building blocks of the internet – an essential component of every email address and website. Millions of businesses and consumers now depend on Nominet’s services, which underpin a critical part of the UK Internet economy.  Nominet is a private, not-for-profit business, responsible for the smooth and secure running of the .uk internet infrastructure.  We have over 2,800 members and are committed to acting in the public interest.

With the proceeds of our successful registry business, we set up and support the Nominet Trust, an independent charitable foundation focussed on increasing access, safety and education on internet issues. As part of our commitment to making the internet a more trusted space, we have also developed an information and advice portal – www.knowthenet.org.uk – which helps internet users to get the most of being online by staying safe, legal, and informed.

This Nominet news release was sourced from:
www.nominet.org.uk/news/latest/2013-uk-web-domain-disputes

ICANN: Charter for the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group is Published

Second Round Of New gTLD Applications On ICANN Board Agenda: auIGF Discussion

The prospect of a second round of applications for new gTLDs is on the agenda for ICANN, with discussions likely to take place at an upcoming board meeting, possibly as early as September.

“The board will soon start discussing the possibility of opening a second round of applications for new gTLDs, said ICANN board member and auDA CEO Chris Disspain at the Australian Internet Governance Forum Wednesday in a discussion on new gTLDs focussing on the upcoming .melbourne.

The earliest possibility for discussions is an ICANN board retreat, scheduled for early to mid-September.

The conference was preceded by the announcement of the winners of the Australia and New Zealand Internet Awards (ANZIA), a collaboration between auDA and InternetNZ, that recognise organisations, businesses and individuals who excel in delivering accessible, innovative, informative and secure resources to a diverse and wide community on the Internet.

“The concept of the ANZIAs came from discussions between Keith Davidson (the then CEO of InternetNZ) and me over several glasses of red wine,” said Disspain. “We wanted to be able to reward those organisations, individuals and businesses we had seen develop incredible online resources, for the benefit of all Australians and New Zealanders. The Internet is a place where everyone is able to exchange ideas and communicate, on a level playing field. The ANZIAs are a way to acknowledge the world-class initiatives that are created, in both of our countries.”

There were winners in six different categories:

• Diversity: Cultural Infusion
• Innovation: ARTS:LIVE – The Song Room
• Information: Policy Online (APO)
• Access & Digital Skills: Get Up To Speed Program – The Training Collective
• Security & Online Safety: RealMe – New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs
• The Leonie Dunbar Memorial Award for Community Websites: Apollo Bay Community Website Inc

A full list of winners and those highly commended is available at www.internetawards.org.au

The upcoming launch of the .melbourne gTLD was also the focus though of one session. Questions were raised about the cost, due to the $50 wholesale premium being charged to registrars. But ARI Registry Services CEO Adrian Kinderis, who will provide registry services, justified the cost for three reasons – respect for the Australian country code .au, preventing cybersquatting and that it’s expensive to run a TLD, so with less names, costs have to be higher to pay the bills.

Kinderis also believes that the use of a city gTLD such as .melbourne will also help internet users find their desired destination.

If you’re searching for Melbourne, the results for .melbourne will be ranked higher, Kinderis believes. The same with brands. Searching for a brand will rank websites using the brand gTLD higher than other sites.

But for registrants using domains in more generic TLDs, Kinderis believes they will in the main not be ranked highly in search results.

.TV Value Grows With Changing Nature Of Media Consumption

The Tuvaluan ccTLD .TV has had its ups and downs since it was rebranded as a TLD aimed at the television industry. But it appears to be growing according to a report in The New York Times.

“Today, as video is watched on smartphones and laptops rather than on living room couches, the .tv suffix — owned, improbably, by the tiny South Pacific island nation of Tuvalu — has become for some companies a chance to signal that they are showing video the way people are increasingly used to seeing it. Last month, 190 million Americans watched online video content, according to comScore.”

“A .tv web address has become ‘important from a branding point of view,’ said Tony Lorenz, the chief executive of BOB.tv, a company that streams videos related to best business practices.”

The background to .tv is explained. It was assigned as Tuvalu’s ccTLD in the 1990s. “At the height of the Internet gold rush, in 1999, a start-up named DotTV paid Tuvalu $50 million over 12 years for the right to sell .tv to other companies. The .tv suffix represented two of the most recognizable letters in the world, and DotTV’s founders believed .tv could be bigger than .com because TV viewing would soon migrate to the web.”

The report goes on to note “China.tv was sold for $100,000 a year to an Internet service provider in China, according to Lou Kerner, a venture capitalist who, in 2000, left his job at Goldman Sachs to become chief executive of DotTV.”

“DotTV was onto something, though the idea was a bit premature, as a lack of broadband limited the growth and quality of online video.

“In 2002, Verisign, a large manager of web addresses, acquired the company and still operates the .tv domain today. It agreed in 2011 to manage the .tv address through 2021, and the payments to Tuvalu’s government are said to be a couple million dollars a year.”

To read the New York Times report in full, go to:
www.nytimes.com/2014/08/27/business/media/a-newly-valuable-virtual-address.html

.ORG Grows 1.4 Percent To 10.43 Million In First Half, 2014

The total number of .org domains under management increased to 10,428,027 globally, a 1.4 percent (143,512) increase in registrations in the six months to the end of June 2014, the latest bi-annual Dashboard report from the Public Interest Registry, the .org registry operator, has found.

 

Other findings outlined in “The Dashboard” include the following:

• Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and France also saw steady growth and continued to lead as the top five markets for .org registrants outside of the United States.
• .org continues to experience a strong renewal rate of 73.9 percent; more than 55 percent of registrants renewed after one year, 72.3 percent of registrants renewed after their second year, and nearly 85 percent of registrants renewed after their third year.
• .org domains help organisations from a wide variety of sectors to share their passions, ideas and causes online. Some top industries include information and manufacturing services, arts, entertainment and recreation.

“The Dashboard” also reveals that Asia continues to be a strong growth market for the .org domain. In the first half of 2014, China, Japan and India saw notable growth, and now comprise more than six percent of the total .org market.

“After three decades, we’re thrilled to see that .org remains the domain of choice for organisations serving the public interest,” said Brian Cute, CEO of Public Interest Registry. “In the past few years, the .org domain hit 10 million domains under management and experienced rapid adoption in several international markets. We’re optimistic that in the year ahead, more and more organisations, individuals and around the globe will turn to .org to share their passions, ideas and causes.”

Additionally, to further Public Interest Registry’s commitment to bringing people across the globe online, the organisation launched three new International Domain Names (IDNs), which translate to “organisation” or “institution” in non-Latin based scripts — Devanagari, Cyrillic and simplified Chinese. With these new IDNs, website owners are able to use their native script to brand their organisation and connect with more Internet users across the globe.

The report also found the industry with the most .org domains is “information”, which accounts for 20.0 percent of all registrations followed by “manufacturing” (15.1%) and “miscellaneous services” (14.8%).

The latest edition of PIR’s Dashboard is available for download from:
pir.org/news-events/for-press/dashboard/