From Wednesday this week, the World Intellectual Property
Organisation (WIPO) began accepting complaints from trademark
owners over the new .info domain names. The “Sunrise Period”,
during which those claiming to be trade mark holders could register
.info names before the public, ended on Monday.
A report released yesterday by Professor Robert Connor of the
University of Minnesota estimated that up to 25% of “Sunrise
Period” registrations were fraudulent. His conclusions were reached
by checking the WHOIS database of those who registered 11,500 .info
names.
During the Sunrise Period, 12% of registrations were for domain
names which, although not identical to trademarks, were very
similar to trademarks. A further 6% of registrations had a blank
trademark name entered on their registrations, with another 11%
showing an error in the trademark number. 21% of registrations had
their trademark number duplicated in another registration. Added to
this were 23% of registrations where the trademark dates given were
outside the date range required by Afilias, the consortium managing
the .info roll-out.
Critics of the allocation process say that Afilias made it too
easy for cyber-squatters to claim .info domain names without proper
trademarks.
Major companies such as America On-Line and Apple have already
failed to secure their .info names. The aol.info name has been
registered by a UK woman who claims to offer “activities
on-line”.
