The witness list has just been posted for the House IP committee on the new gTLD’s hearing that’s going to be held on Wednesday , and its not shocking that the list isn’t exactly fair and balanced.
Here is the list:
Witness List
Kurt Pritz
Senior Vice President, Stakeholder Relations
ICANN
Mei-lan Stark
Senior Vice President, Intellectual Property
Fox Group Legal
Michael Palage
President and CEO
Pharos Global
Steven Metalitz
Partner
Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP
Steve DelBianco
Executive Director
NetChoice
Joshua Bourne
President
CADNA
Fox (News Corp.) should be expected to take a very hard line position against the new gTLD’s based off of concerns of Trademark holders.
Mike Palage just posted an article at Circle ID saying that “The ICANN Board needs to ensure that every GAC concern is fully addressed to their satisfaction.”
Steve Metallitz formerly worked at the Motion Picture Assn. before entering private practice, and is also a former head of ICANN’s IP Constituency.
Of course Josh Bourne has been leading the trademark groups in saying that the new gTLD program will cause great damage to Trademark interests.
If you listen to the hearing remember that every word, two letter, three letter combination and mostly every phrase or saying, you have every heard is trademarked all the way down to even the letter “F” and that’s just in the US.
Trademark groups want protection not just for very famous and distinctive marked such as Verizon and Google but for ALL trademarks, from anywhere in the world including jurisdictions that protect marks that are not even in use yet.
Kurt Pritz from ICANN seems to be the only one who will be defending the new gTLD program and should expect a nightmarish attach from Congress and all witnesses.
We will be listening to the hearing and keep you updated
I’ll not be able to watch this live, but definitely plan to see it later Wednesday evening. If anyone can post a link to video of the hearing, it would be much appreciated.
sure everything is trademarked. but not in every trademark class. otherwise _all_ businesses online and offline would lack sufficient freedom to operate free from spurious trademark claims, not just domainers.
let’s hope the house members don’t see icann’s tld operations as a blackmail scheme aimed at trademark holders. because if they take icann’s gtld evaluation and application fees and consider the number of major trademark holders worlwide, and then do the math, they just might see it that way.
it’s a decision being pushed on trademark holders- pay icann or take their chances.
let’s hope they see the internet as an opportunity, they can share in, not simply a threat to business and political incumbents. (stuff like wikileaks, which could be viewed as a blackmail-like scheme, makes the internet look more like the latter. more threat than opportunity.)
to icann, tld’s are pure opportunity. but that’s just icann.