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Transcript Excerpt: IPC Update

Date: 
Wed 26 Oct 2011

>>PAUL McGRADY: Good afternoon, everyone. Just a brief update on our meeting. We had a very concise agenda because of our pre-Dakar calls. We try to take as many decisions as we can before we get here, especially in situations like this where the venue perhaps was a little challenging for the majority of our membership to make it.

I think without a doubt the highlight of our meeting yesterday was the visit from various members of other constituencies who came and engaged in dialogue with us about various topics that weren't necessarily on the agenda, but still was a very interesting time and certainly kept everybody engaged in the conversation.

The primary take-aways from the meeting, substantively, were concerns about new gTLD issues. As you can appreciate, I'm sure, the IPC is very keen on not complicating or weakening the RPMs for new gTLDs through the implementation process. We would like to see ICANN do a better job promoting the importance of trademark protections on the fact sheets and on the Web sites.

We would like to see, of course, drafts of the URS before an RFP is issues. We would also like to see a draft of the trademark clearinghouse product for public comment as well.

And lastly, on the topic of new gTLDs, we think that a Webinar perhaps can be put together for parties who will be newly contracted and others in terms of what their obligations are to comply with the RPMs. The IPC would be happy to be involved in that.

One of the consistent comments we have heard over the year is about the UDRP in terms of registrar compliance is that the registrars simply didn't understand it and that's why there was so much noncompliance before the compliance department appeared on the scene.

We would hate to go through another five or ten-year period where we have contracted parties who have signed contracts but don't seem to understand what those contracts mean.
And so we would be happy to help on the education front for the RPMs.

The next major topic were the RAA revisions. As a constituency, we're happy to welcome reports that the RAA revisions will be published before the Costa Rica meeting. We look forward to seeing those. We also look forward to a transparent negotiating process where everybody will have an opportunity to look at those and comment and be involved.

And then lastly on the substantive topics, the issue of UDRP review came up. I think that one of the common themes that we hear generally is how much work not only this council has to do but the community generally. And right now, in the middle of implementation of new gTLDs, we certainly are all quite busy. I do think that the IPC believes that there is not much appetite for yet another major project right now in the middle of all that and would hope to see this issue deferred to an appropriate time. However, I think the consensus around the table of the IPC members that were there is that if it's going to happen we will be putting together a robust wish list of things that we intend to insist on, because obviously that has to be part of the process.

But in any event, that was the substantive topics, primarily, that were covered in our meeting.

We ended the meeting by thanking our wonderful councillor, Kristina Rosette, who has done an amazing job over these years for the IPC, and we're going to keep her from having to bring her own motion to thank herself today. Kristine has done a fantastic job and we ended our meeting telling her how much we appreciated her hard work and dedication to intellectual property interests.