Another obstacle to protecting trademarks online

Policing your trademark will become more difficult next month when a new policy protecting the individual identity of domain name holders comes into effect. In order to comply with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) will no longer be providing personal information about individual registrants to the public (address, telephone number, etc…) through the WHOIS search directory.

Currently, anyone can query the WHOIS directory to find out if a particular domain name is available. Trademark holders can also make use of the directory to see if third parties are using their registered trademarks as domain names. The WHOIS directory provided an avenue for trademark holders to contact domain name registrants. Being able to access this contact information facilitated dispute resolution with a registrant who was violating your trademark rights. On a previous post, I talk about CIRA’s dispute resolution policies and the rights of trademark holders.  

As of June 10th, however, direct contact between domain name holders and trademark owners will not be possible. CIRA will insitute a procedure to ‘pass along’ correspondence from third parties to domain name holders, although it is unclear how much that will assist in resolving disputes. 

Under the new privacy policy, contact information will still be available for corporate registrants.