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Neteka believes that the introduction of multilingual domain names is imminent and brings huge value to the Internet for it to become a truly global medium. Domain names have become more than merely a string of characters for technical identification of an Internet resource, and have become a critical part of corporate branding and more important of all the identity of a person or a corporation on the Internet. This is confirmed by the need for the UDRP and its importance.

The Internet community will benefit the most especially for the new comers on the Internet from regions where English is not a common language. The introduction of multilingual domain names reduces the barrier for entry for these people of the world. Corporations can also advertise their brand names in local languages, consistent to their existing literatures.

The current DNS, which only supports the ASCII character set, creates a barrier to the use of the Internet for people who do not speak English or other Latin alphabet-based languages as their native language. The primary benefit to developing IDNs that are fully compatible with the current DNS would be to broaden the accessibility of the Internet, allowing more people to participate in and contribute to the Internet community.

According to IDG News Service, 47% of Internet-connected devices in the Asia Pacific region use written scripts that require the use of non-English character sets. While it is difficult to determine precisely how much IDNs will increase the use of the Internet by these communities, such indications of demand for multilingual products lead us to believe that IDNs will greatly encourage and simplify Internet use.

While the addition of new languages may cause difficulties for individuals who would like to access, for example, a Chinese language website but do not have the technical ability to type in Chinese, we at register.com feel that the benefits gained by this option to Chinese speakers considerably outweighs such disadvantages.

1-1. What is your view of the value of IDNs?

IDN could make people convenient for using Internet, especially those whoare using non-Latin family languages. Moreover, it would make an cultural effect on them so that they could exactly express their own identities.

1-2. Who will benefit from them?

IDN could be very beneficial to those users who are using non-Latin family languages and those entrepreneurs that are trying to make some businesses targeted on them.

1-3. Is there any empirical proof of these benefits?

As IDN has not yet been deployed, its benefit is very uncertain. Then, in other services like BBS or on-line chatting, where user's mother tongue could be available in using id there are lots of people who prefer to choose their mother tongue style ids. This shows us well how such a use could be beneficial.

1-4. Who will IDNs harm?

If we suppose a situation, in which IDN is to be popularly used and so the number of users who use only IDNs would sharply increase, the communication problem among people or companies that belong to different language zones could take place. In these cases, those who could not key in specified different language domain name labeled on the printed matter could fail to communicate or give up such attempts.

IDN is very valuable because the name space is broadened for use by non-English users. This is because

• Many Japanese words have multiple presentations, i.e., in Katakana, Hiragana, or Kanji.
• Different Japanese words usually have the same presentation in ASCII string, as they have the same pronunciation or they have the same corresponding English words.

We have small set of examples by now as registration has just begun. Our experience till now shows more than half of the applied domain names in the sunrise period of a new domain space, which accommodates both ASCCI and Japanese names, were Japanese ones that are trademarks or trade names. This is thought to be a kind of evidence that Japanese users would like to use Japanese domain names.

However, visually handicapped users may suffer from the difficulty in identifying the domain names they want to type-in, because pronouncing English alphabets is much easier than vocally identifying Japanese characters among over 2,000 different characters.

It has been noted that the number of non-English speakers is increasing very quickly in the whole Internet Community. However, DNS, which was basically designed for English speakers, is significantly unfriendly to the non-English speakers. Since the Internet is the medium for communication, it should never be used as a test on people's English proficiency.

In China, over 80% of the population cannot read English (why should every body learn English?). Even though extensive Chinese contents have been developed on behalf of Chinese Internet users, DNS is the "last-mile" that prevent Chinese netizens from using the Internet comfortably and conveniently.

Just as DNS, newly emerged IDNs might also cause problems in respect of intellectual property protection. However, non-English domain name disputes could be prevented and resolved through proper systems. Considering the business opportunity offered by IDNs in non-English speaking countries and regions, IDNs should not be regarded as harmful to IP owners.

Trademarks can of course be registered in non-Roman script. The unauthorized use of the trademark as a domain name may amount to trademark infringement in the same way as unauthorized use of a Roman-based character trademark.

The transliteration or translation of a Roman-script trademark into a non-Roman-script language can amount to infringement. The question of trademark infringement varies according to the national law involved, but in very general terms is likely to depend on how the Roman-script trademark is known or referred to in the local language and whether the use of the translation or transliteration is likely to cause the public to believe that the trademark owner is associated with the word.

There are no trademark treaties or other international agreements which focus on this issue.

2-1. Does the translation or transliteration of a trademark or othername constitute a violation?

Not necessarily. Whether the right of trademark is to be infringed or notdepends on the confusion of consumers. And confusion is decided depending on the similarity of trademark. Therefore, it depends on the similarity between the translation or transliteration of a trademark and trademark itself.

2-2. Does the answer to this question vary depending on the legal system?

The similarity could not be rigidly defined by legal system but to some extent depends on the level of consumers' understanding of the applied foreign language or a certain of transaction environment. So far as the institution of trademark is based on the framework of maintaining the competitive business environment by blocking out the confusion of consumers, this may be the same in most countries. In some legal system that adopts dilution provisions, individual rights of trademark owners is weighted rather than the confusion of consumers. But the dilution provisions could not change judging of similarity.

The similarity of the translation or the transliteration of trademark could be discerned by the generally applied principle of "sound, sight and meaning trilogy". This principle applies in Korea as well as the U.S., Japan and most European countries.

2-3. About UDRP

UDRP should be reviewed and complemented because it had never considered IDN. To judge the infringement of trademark in IDN particularly in the case of translation or transliteration of trademark, those who have the bilingual or multilingual capacity should participate in panels.Therefore, in future, there should be some measures for making service providers in geographic locations depending on language family or some obligatory requirements to have those qualified panelists in service providers of domain name dispute.

Since trademark right has the characteristic of territoriality, the answers to the above questions depend on the legal systems under which the trademark rights claim. Art. 6bis of Paris Convention, which is the most widely accepted international convention on industrial property, requests the member states to prohibit the use of "… a translation, liable to create confusion, of a mark considered by the competent authority of the country of registration or use to be well-known in that country as being already the mark of the person entitled to the benefits of this Convention and used for identical or similar goods". Art. 16 of WTO Trips Agreement extends the protection of well-known marks to "the goods or services which are not similar to those in respect of which a trademark is registered, provided that use of that trademark in relation to those goods or services would indicate a connection between those goods or services and the owner of the registered trademark and provided that the interests of the owner of the registered trademark are likely to be damaged by such use".

Under CDNC members' (e.g., CNNIC, TWNIC) Trademark Law and Implementing Rules of Trademark Law, use of translation of any well-known trademark of another party, liable to create confusion, is a violation of trademark right.

IDNs will increase the opportunity for cybersquatting. There are many hundreds of thousands of trademarks registered in non-Roman script languages and no doubt many more trademarks which are used without being registered. The ability to register a domain name in these languages will not only enable the trademark owners to register their own trademarks as domain names, but will also give the opportunity to cybersquatters to register the domain names. In addition, there will be the opportunity to register the non-Roman script equivalent (whether in the form of a transliteration or translation) of Roman-script trademarks.

Cybersquatting of IDNs is already an issue and several cases have been brought under the UDRP.

Basically, the introduction of IDN may have nothing to do with the increase of cybersquatting. Under the present condition that permit only limited subset of Latin characters, many alterations by translation / transliteration / hyphenating of the original name have been used.

However, if IDN is used, there is only one correct naming and only one domain name in its own language, therefore, the dispute could be rather vehemently increased.

All three are important protection mechanisms.

A functioning and fully searchable WHOIS database is essential for dealing with cybersquatting, although language and technical issues need to be addressed.

Also, it is vital that IDNs should be subject to the UDRP. Dealing with disputes involving IDNs involves additional complications and the ability of the existing dispute providers to administer such disputes should be carefully analyzed and any amendments to the existing process to better accommodate IDN disputes should be considered.

The existing incompatible registration systems for IDNs have not included a sunrise for registered trademarks. We would favour a sunrise system for registered trademarks, but further consideration needs to be given to this issue and to the question of how existing registrations should be incorporated, if at all, into such a system.

Both domain name registration agreements and DRP systems are effective measures to combat cybersquatting. Registration agreements provide a contractual-based control over cybersquatting. Contact details of registrants and open Whois database have been proved effective. Also, DRP offers a quick, cheap and almost fair channel for resolving domain name disputes.

Among the three measures--a "sunrise" period for pre-registration; a functioning WHOIS database; or a functioning UDRP system, it is hard to say which one is the most important, but a "sunrise" period for pre-registration may be caused more problems than those it prevents. The most dangerous of all, registries or registrars could get involved in domain name disputes caused by sunrise measure.

One policy issue raised by IDNs is implementation and communication between registries and registrars.in the IDN space. Ample and equal notice from registries to registrars regarding testbeds and other new developments is important in creating an even playing field onto which new technologies will be introduced. ICANN can help achieve better communication by actively encouraging dialogue between registries and registrars. If such voluntary measures do not succeed, ICANN may need to consider using its authority to ensure that individual actors do not harm the overall interests of the Internet community.

A second policy concern is the involvement of non-English speakers in the policy development and implementation processes. Representatives from communities using non-Roman languages should be thoroughly consulted as IDN decisions are made. This includes making documents, such as the current survey available in a variety of languages.

6-1. What other legal and policy issues are raised by IDN?

If there are some language families that could bring about some confusion in naming expression even among different languages, some attentions should be paid in legal, technical or other policy aspects.

Domain name is being used for web surfing as well as functioning as anidentifier for confirmation in most transactions including electronic commerce. Therefore, the security and the verifiability are also very important issues. Then, IDN could have many similarly looking characters even among different dozens of languages. Those could be used for fraud and consequently threaten the security.

Therefore, some control over registration permission or dispute resolutionis required so that this collision could be minimized. To solve this technically, if similarly looking characters are inserted in name space, the one unified representative character could be replaced as anormalization process. If this kind of policies could be adopted, it could mitigate the problems.

However, Japanese katakana ni, it looks the same one as Chinese character number two. So, it is not easy to determine whether those are to be same or not. Many cases like this will be found if studied.

6-2. How should ICANN address them, if at all?

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Among others, the following issues are thought to be the most important:

1) Internationalization of TLDs. Although we need more discussion, we tend to state TLDs should not be internationalized because language and countries(cc's) do not represent the same set of users.

2) Alternative roots. Internet community must not have alternative roots. And ICANN should try to prevent from alternative roots.

3) Languages for UDRP process. The language, which is implied by the "domain name," should be able to be used in the UDRP process even if the domain name is being registered in a jurisdiction with English.

UDRP might not be fully applicable to IDNs. Thus, UDRP itself may need modulation to some extent. Further, the operation system of UDRP may also need reform. Current UDRP service providers (WIPO, NFC, CPR and e-Resolution) are undoubtably competent of dealing with English domain name disputes, but their capability and resources for dealing with IDN disputes are fairly suspicious. Should ICANN consider delegating dispute service providers in different language communities?

In my humble opinion as a besieged trademark holder the limited viability of the proposed extensions will prove, in the end, not to be worth the effort now being undertaken. The primary beneficiaries of these proposals are the speculators and cybersquatters.