29 Rights Protection Mechanisms

Prototypical answer:

Except where specified this answer refers to the operations of William Morris Endeavor Entertainment LLC (WME)ʹs outsourced Registry Service Provider, CentralNic.

WME recognizes providing appropriate mechanisms to protect legal rights of others as one of the core objectives of the Registry. WME will follow rules and policies developed by ICANN with regards to Rights Protection Mechanisms (RPMs). WME will fully comply with Specification 7 of the new gTLD registry agreement and will provide additional rights protection mechanisms over and above the ICANN requirements. Both standard and additional RPMs are described below.
In particular it should be noted that .WME is a single-registrant registry where only the applicant, William Morris Endeavor (WME) can make registrations for its own use. This will be done in strict compliance with all policies set forth by ICANN and the registration process identifying the WME eligibility requirements established in response to question #18, including requirement that the low volume of domains registered do not to infringe on rights of others. As a result the TLD is considered as secure as it possible can be in regards to right protection.

29.1. Sunrise Period
Prior to the open registration phase WME will offer a priority registration period for owners of trademarks and service marks. This period will last at least 30 days. Since .WME is operated as a single-registrant-registry with eligibility criteria set forth in response to question #18, and since WME does not anticipate making sunrise registrations, no such registrations are anticipated. However, WME will comply with ICANN requirements concerning sunrise period establishment and criteria as described further below.

Additionally WME will support Trademark Clearinghouse (TCH) as it is implemented by ICANN.

The flowchart of the Sunrise and eligibility validation process is available in Figure 24.4.

29.1.1. Sunrise Eligibility Requirements
Any entity that holds a trademark or service mark will be qualified to register a domain during the Sunrise period. As mentioned established eligibility requirements must also be fulfilled. Registrations obtained during the Sunrise Period will be subject to challenge as described below.

As a minimum, the Registry will recognize the requirements set forth in the 11 January 2012 ICANN Applicant Guidebook, Trademark Clearing House Specification, Section 7.2., or any subsequent versions thereto.

Full details of the Sunrise registration process will be finalized after the Trademark Clearinghouse service is implemented and full documentation, policies, terms and conditions are made available. For guidance, data items that will need to be provided by the qualifying applicant to apply for a WME Sunrise registration are listed below:
• name or description of the trademark
• registration number
• registration date
• country of registration
• capacity of the applicant
• reference to the Trademark Clearinghouse database record
• Representation that the information provided is true and correct

29.1.2. Sunrise Challenge Process
A process will be in place to allow third parties to dispute the registrant rights to own a domain name. WME will engage with a reputable adjudicator to manage the Sunrise challenge process. The adjudicator will charge a reasonable fee for Sunrise challenges.

The Sunrise Challenge rules will allow challenges based on at least the following four grounds. These may be adjusted to match the eligibility requirements in the Trademark Clearing House, if modified from its current form.
• At the time the challenged domain name was registered, the registrant did not hold a word mark registration of national effect (or regional effect) and for which proof of use was validated by the TCH; or
• The word mark had not been court-validated; or
• The word mark was no protected by statute or treaty and in effect on or prior to 26 June 2008; or
• The domain name was not identical to the mark on which the registrant based its Sunrise registration.

29.2. Trademark Claims Service
The Trademark Claims service will be launched by the registry as soon as it is required by ICANN, in its final specification thereof. WME will review the effect of the Trademark Claims service.

The essence of the Trademark Claims service is as follows: if a domain name registration is attempted for which there exists a matching record in the Trademark Clearinghouse database, then the prospective registrant will be presented with a notice that third party trademark rights exist for a matching designation and will be required to provide a statement that to the best of his or her knowledge, the registration and use of the requested domain name will not infringe on the rights of the trademark holders.
If the registrant chooses to proceed with the registration, the corresponding trademark holder(s) will be notified that such registration has taken place.
Operational rules of the Trademark Claims service are heavily dependent on the specific implementation of the Trademark Clearinghouse which is not yet available in writing. Therefore full details of the Trademark Claims service will be finalized after the TCH is implemented by ICANN and full documentation, policies, terms and conditions become available.

29.3. Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP)
The Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy is an ICANN consensus policy for adjudication of disputes between domain name holders and owners of matching trademarks. Every registrant must agree to this mandatory administrative procedure in its Domain Registration Agreement with the registrar. Registrars have certain responsibilities to facilitate adjudication of UDRP disputes and to enforce the decisions of the arbitration panels.

.WME will comply with the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy or with any successor thereof. The UDRP will be incorporated by reference into Registry-Registrar Agreements. Similarly, Registrars will be required to incorporate it into their Domain Registration agreements with the Registrants.

The UDRP process does not provide for any participation by the Registry and is fully borne by the Registrar, Registrant, Complainant and the Dispute Resolution Provider.

WME will collaborate with all relevant stakeholders to ensure UDRP decisions are implemented.

CentralNic has experience maintaining a dispute resolution policy similar to UDRP with WIPO which is available at http:⁄⁄www.wipo.int⁄amc⁄en⁄domains⁄gtld⁄cnic⁄index.html. CentralNic has dedicated personnel trained to manage the implementation of UDRP decisions made by all ICANN authorized dispute resolution providers.

29.4. Uniform Rapid Suspension System (URS)
The Uniform Rapid Suspension System (URS) described in the ICANN gTLD Applicant Guidebook is a new Rights Protection Mechanism for rapid takedown of domain names that by clear and convincing evidence infringe on legitimate trademark rights of third parties.
As opposed to the UDRP procedure, registries are required to participate in the URS procedure and enforcement of the URS decisions. WME will comply with the URS policy once and as it is implemented by ICANN.

The current URS procedure as described in the Applicant Guidebook is as follows: within 24 hours of receipt of the Notice of Complaint from a URS Provider, the Registry has to lock the domain, restricting all changes to the registration data, including transfer and deletion. The domain name will continue to resolve at this stage. The Registry will notify the URS Provider immediately upon locking the domain name.

If the URS Determination is in favor of Complainant, upon receipt of the Determination the Registry will suspend the domain name which is intended to remain suspended for the balance of the registration period and will not resolve to the original web site. Instead, the nameservers will be redirected to an informational web page provided by the URS Provider about the URS. The Whois record for the domain name will continue to display all of the information of the original Registrant except for the redirection of the nameservers. In addition, the Whois will reflect that the domain name will not be able to be transferred, deleted or modified for the life of the registration.

If the URS Determination is in favor of the Respondent, the Registry will remove the lock status from the domain name allowing the registrant to continue using it normally.
The URS compliance function will be performed by CentralNic and overseen by WME. Given CentralNic long-standing experience in dealing with trademark-related disputes in domain names, WME has no doubt that this function will be performed by CentralNic flawlessly.


29.5 Abusive use⁄takedown policies
Response to question #28 contains a detailed description of measures that WME will take to prevent and mitigate abusive registrations and the description of policies that WME will apply to handle complaints regarding abuse and take down abusive registrations. To summarize,
• WME will dedicate a single abuse point of contact. Correspondence and complaints coming through that point of contact will be continuously monitored and responded to within 24 hours
• WME will publish the Anti-Abuse Policy on its website; setting forth the procedures the Registry will apply in case of Anti-Abuse Policy violations; and also including its takedown procedures.
• WME will delete orphan glue records once the parent domain is deleted to prevent abuse of these orphan glue records
• WME will require registrars to perform extra checks on WHOIS data to improve its accuracy
• WME will perform random audits of WHOIS data and will flag suspicious registrations via registrars

29.6 Post-Delegation Dispute Resolution Procedure
WME reaffirms its intent to comply with the ICANN-mandated Post-Delegation Dispute Resolution Procedure (PDDRP).
WME believes that its choice of TLD string and the way the TLD is intended to be operated represents a good faith offering of Top Level Domain Registry service and does not infringe on any legitimate third party trademark rights.

WME also reaffirms its commitment to maintain .WME free of violations of third party trademark rights through second level domain registration and use. WME has all the required resources, policies and procedures in place to address any situations of abuse without the need to invoke the PDDRP procedure.

29.7. Resourcing
The Rights Protection Mechanisms described above include a combination of both technical and non-technical systems: for example, the Trademark Claims Service may (depending on the final specification published by ICANN) require development, maintenance and support of an EPP extension, as well as real-time integration with the TCH API, whereas the UDRP is a primarily manual process of managing and responding to UDRP dispute resolution providers and implementing their decisions in cases of disputes.

As can be seen in the Resourcing Matrix found in Appendix 23.2, CentralNic will maintain a team of full-time developers and engineers which will contribute to the development and maintenance of this aspect of the registry system. These developers and engineers will not work on specific subsystems full-time, but a certain percentage of their time will be dedicated to each area. The total HR resource dedicated to this area is equivalent to half of a full-time role.

CentralNic operates a shared registry environment where multiple registry zones (such as CentralNicʹs domains, the .LA ccTLD, this TLD and other gTLDs) share a common infrastructure and resources. Since the TLD will be operated in a similar manner to these other registries, and on the same infrastructure, then the TLD will benefit from an economy of scale with regards to access to CentralNicʹs resources.

CentralNicʹs resourcing model assumes that the ʺdedicatedʺ resourcing required for the TLD (i.e., that required to deal with issues related specifically to the TLD and not to general issues with the system as a whole) will be equal to the proportion of the overall registry system that the TLD will use. After three years of operation, the projection for the TLD states that there will be 2,000 domains in the zone. CentralNic has calculated that, if all its TLD clients are successful in their applications, and all meet their projections after three years, its registry system will be required to support up to 4.5 million domain names. Therefore the TLD will require 0.04% of the total resources available for this area of the registry system.

In the event that registration volumes exceed this figure, CentralNic will proactively increase the size of the Technical Operations, Technical Development and support teams to ensure that the needs of the TLD are fully met. Revenues from the additional registration volumes will fund the salaries of these new hires. Nevertheless, CentralNic is confident that the staffing outlined above is sufficient to meet the needs of the TLD for at least the first 18 months of operation.

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