On the second day of the 2018 Russian Internet Forum, April 19, the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ held the Domains vs. Stakeholders section attended by representatives of the Association of Internet Trade Companies (AITC), domain registries, domainers, and stakeholders. AITC representative Alexander Logunov spoke about the initiative to create a specialized list of intellectual property objects, which would contain information about all copyrights, related right objects and trademarks the use of which is restricted by the domain delegation. The AITC believes this list will prohibit registering domain names that include trademarks without the stakeholder’s permission.
Most of the participants disagreed with this approach. Expert of the Russian State Academy of Intellectual Property (RSAIP) Anton Gurko noted that there was a fuller list: the database of the Federal Service for Intellectual Property (Rospatent), and there was no need for a mediator between this base and the stakeholders. In addition to this, the number of domain names, which would be prohibited to use and register according to the AITC idea, is almost endless. “If a stakeholder is so concerned with protecting their brands and is ready to pay any money for being on the list, why not simply register all possible domains and support them?” the Coordination Center’s Deputy Director on Legal Issues Sergei Kopylov asked a rhetorical question.
Director of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ Andrey Vorobyev spoke about the problem determining which domains could be considered infringing stakeholders’ rights and which couldn’t is quite acute all over the world. Often even the World Intellectual Property Organization, after examining a stakeholder’s application, cannot decide for certain if the registration of this or that domain should be canceled. Sergei Kopylov noted that the Coordination Center does a lot for stakeholders. “We have developed a mechanism to solve domain disputes as well as interim measures for stakeholders, used out of court right after applying. In recent years, we have accumulated legal expertise in domain disputes, and our best practices are recommended for use in court. Online Patent carried out a most interesting research, Domain Names and Trademark in Runet, which showed that most .RU and .РФ domain names are in the risk zone. In addition to all of this, there are special services for stakeholders on the Coordination Center’s website that can help solve many issues quickly and out of court,” Sergei Kopylov said.
Andrey Vorobyev also noted that the Coordination Center had an institute of responsible agencies, such as the Safe Internet League, Group-IB, Kaspersky Lab, RU-CERT, the Regional Public Internet Technology Center, the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor), BIZon and the Bank of Russia. “Our mechanism of countering illegal resources, phishing and so on is acknowledged at the state level and is the quickest in reacting,” Vorobyev said.
Andrei Kuzmichyov (RU-CENTER) added that stakeholders must not receive information about what domain other individuals or entities were going to register, but about how to protect their trademarks in the domain space. All the participants agreed it was necessary to pay more attention to educating users and stakeholders in particular. “Intellectual property protection is not the Coordination Center’s task. Courts work with it, but we are ready to provide the necessary help,” Sergei Kopylov concluded.
The domain names stop-list was the second theme of the section. Andrei Vorovyov spoke about the names on the stop-list that would soon be available for registration. He added that the criteria used to add domain names on the list were quite clear now, and this made the work of the Coordination Center and domain registrars much easier.
