How is ICANN protecting rights of trademark holders, communities and other right holders against abusive registrations and infringement?
ICANN has sought input from numerous businesses, governments and the intellectual property community to devise an approach to protecting the rights of third parties. The plan outlined in the Applicant Guidebook (and corresponding Explanatory Memoranda) addresses rights protection issues at both the top-level and the second-level of the domain name space. At the top-level, ICANN is implementing an objection-based process for dispute resolution where rights holders can assert that proposed gTLD strings would infringe their legal rights based upon generally accepted and internationally recognized principles of law. This process is also being developed with the understanding that it is also not unusual to have a trademark in the same word or phrase for different products or services or registered in different jurisdictions. At the second-level, ICANN is implementing a process where new gTLD applicants are required to describe their Rights Protection Mechanism (RPM) within their application
