Subject: [provreg] EPP LaunchPhase Extension: draft requirements and scope

From: Gavin Brown <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 06 Apr 2011 12:22:00 +0100

Dear colleagues,

Thanks to the list administrators for getting this mailing list back up
and running.

For those subscribers not on the regops list
(http://nlnetlabs.nl/mailman/listinfo/regops) there is a draft
co-authored by myself and Wil Tan of  CloudRegistry for an EPP extension
to deal with so-called "sunrise" and "landrush" phases during the
initial startup of a TLD. The draft can be found at this URL:
https://github.com/wil/EPP-Launch-Phase-Extension-Specification

Having spoken to several registrars and registries, I get the feeling 
that such a specification would be very valuable, especially since we 
expect to see hundreds of new TLDs going through sunrise and landrush 
phases in the next couple of years. Many registrars would appreciate 
being able to do a single development that can be reused for all new
TLDs.

Following discussions on regops and a brief meeting during the ICANN
meeting in San Francisco last month, we've prepared a "first pass" of a
requirements document to frame the scope and objectives for this
extension. We are very keen to get feedback, especially from registrars
and those who might offer "trademark clearinghouses" - these people are
unlikely to be subscribers to this list, so if you know them, please
reach out and ask them to participate.

The initial requirements document is attached.

Gavin.

-- 
Gavin Brown
Chief Technology Officer
CentralNic Ltd
Innovative, Reliable and Flexible Registry Services
for ccTLD, gTLD and private domain name registries
https://www.centralnic.com/

CentralNic Ltd is a company registered in England and Wales with company
number 4985780. Registered Offices: 35-39 Moorgate, London, EC2R 6AR.

---

From: Wil Tan <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2011 02:24:07 +1000

> https://github.com/wil/EPP-Launch-Phase-Extension-Specification

The draft is now posted to the IETF repository:

  http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-tan-epp-launchphase-00.txt

.wil

---

From: InterNetX - Volker Janzen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2011 09:52:37 +0200

Hi all,

I had a look at the draft and thought about some experiences we had with
launch phases. A question regarding the lp:trademark_name field appeared.

Some registries do not allow Unicode characters to appear in data
fields, they require US-ASCII.

If you have a German trademark, for instance "Büro" (the German word for
"office"), the common question on launch phases is how to pass this.

With the EPP contact object, you have an attribute "type" defined for
the contact:postalInfo with the values int or loc to handle this issue
(perhaps only one is supported, but then it's clear if I need to pass
US-ASCII or Unicode).

I know that there might be a policy for validating and rewriting
trademark names (e.g. "?" may be omitted). But I think it would be nice
to have something like this "type" attribute for the trademark name in
the draft. If there is no attribute for this, I'd suggest to include a
hint to care about Unicode characters in trademark names.

In my opinion this would increase chances to prevent problems with
Unicode trademark names.

Kind regards,

Volker Janzen
Team Entwicklung

-- 
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Maximilianstr. 6
93047 Regensburg
Germany

Tel: +49 941 59559-0
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---

From: Gavin Brown <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2011 11:58:12 +0100

Hi Volker, thanks for your feedback.

> launch phases. A question regarding the lp:trademark_name field appeared.

My understanding of this field is that it does not contain data that is 
used to validate the applicant's eligibility.

When a trademark clearinghouse is validating an application (for 
example.foo, say), they will take the trademark number (provided in the 
<lp:trademark_number> element) and use this to obtain the full trademark 
information from the trademark authority that has jurisdiction over the 
locality specified in the <lp:trademark_locality> element. This 
information will include the trademark name. The clearinghouse will then 
apply whatever the TLD's policy is for confirming that the trademark 
matches the domain name being applied for.

The <lp:trademark_name> field is therefore only a hint used to confirm 
the mark to which the application refers, but doesn't uniquely and 
solely identify it. It may not even be needed.

Does anyone agree/disagree?

G.

---

From: Jim Reid <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2011 13:02:34 +0100

On 14 Apr 2011, at 11:58, Gavin Brown wrote:

> My understanding of this field is that it does not contain data that  
> is used to validate the applicant's eligibility.

It might or might not provide validation. It depends on the trademark,  
where it's registered and who's doing the validation. In most cases I  
expect the filing number and other registration details would be  
enough. Though there may be examples where the string or logo --  
assuming it can be rendered in Unicode -- will be helpful: Kanji or  
Arabic trademarks for instance.

I'm not sure if this field needs to be added. It would be better to  
ask the people who do trademark validations and find out what they  
have to say about this. I suppose they'd say it was better to have  
this extra info and not need it than the other way round.

FWIW I was on the periphery of the sunrise for .tel. Applicants had to  
submit a canonicalised version of their trademark (ie comparable to  
RFC1123 hostname rules) and the validation agent would ask them for  
more info if/when they felt it was needed. That largely happened for  
incomplete or garbled applications IIRC rather than for trademarks  
which used non-Latin scripts.

> example.foo, say), they will take the trademark number (provided in  
> the <lp:trademark_number> element) and use this to obtain the full  
> trademark information from the trademark authority that has  
> jurisdiction over the locality specified in the  
> <lp:trademark_locality> element. This information will include the  
> trademark name. The clearinghouse will then apply whatever the TLD's  
> policy is for confirming that the trademark matches the domain name  
> being applied for.

IMO it would be wise not to use terms like "clearinghouse" or couple  
this EPP stuff too closely to ICANN's gTLD plans/processes. Although  
that may well be the main focus, it isn't the only game in town: eg  
ccTLD relaunches.

It doesn't follow that the TLD's trademark or sunrise policy can be  
definitive. This may well have to be subservient to the relevant  
trademark authority's rules: eg "if there's a discrepancy between the  
Latin-ised version of a mark and its expression in our local langauge,  
the local text wins".

> The <lp:trademark_name> field is therefore only a hint used to  
> confirm the mark to which the application refers, but doesn't  
> uniquely and solely identify it. It may not even be needed.

That's probably true most of the time. At least for those who are  
validating Latin character names against on-line trademark databases.  
However it may be useful supplementary information when there is  
uncertainty or ambiguity about the trademark. The validation agent may  
well have to ask the applicant for more info in those cases anyway.  
But that would probably be by out-of-band means -- IPR lawyers sending  
faxes or PDFs -- rather than EPP transactions.

---

From: Jens Wagner <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2011 14:08:44 +0200

Hi Gavin, Volker,

I think that a trademark_name field might be required, as long as 
there's no way to query the trademark_name from (trademark_number, 
trademark_locality) in realtime, for all permitted localities.

Reason is that a registry should immediately refuse a domain 
application, if the respective trademark_name does not cover the domain 
name that's applied for.

A registry making use of the launchphase extension should publish the 
set of allowed charactes for trademark_name, and should define a 
function which validates if a trademark_name covers a domain name (e.g. 
a german umlaut Ö could cover Ö only, or Ö, O and OE).

I would not a flag like "type='loc/int'" for this purpose, as it only 
says 'unicode' vs. 7-bit ASCII. Some registries might e.g. want to limit 
e.g. to cyrillic chars only.

Best,
-jens

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Chief Executive Officer
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---

From: James Gould <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2011 10:58:50 -0400

Gavin,

I want to raise the question for the list whether there is any standard
trademark authority interface / protocol since I believe that the EPP
extension would be highly dependent on the underlying interface requirements
with the trademark authorities?  It would be great if representatives of the
trademark authorities could participate and help collaborate on the EPP
extension as well as helping define a standard interface for the registrars
and registries to use.  I¹m afraid without understanding the underlying
interface requirements of the trademark authorities that we¹ll be guessing
on what is needed in the EPP extension that could result in additional
custom extensions having to be created or having to build additional
flexibility into the extension to mitigate the unknown.

-- 

JG

James Gould
Principal Software Engineer
[email-masked]

703-948-3271
21345 Ridgetop Circle
LS2-2-1
Dulles, VA 20166
VerisignInc.com

From: Gavin Brown <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2011 06:58:12 -0400
To: InterNetX - Volker Janzen <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: [provreg] lp:trademark_name field

G.

CentralNic Ltd is a company registered in England and Wales with company
number 4985780. Registered Offices: 35-39 Moorgate, London, EC2R 6AR.
_______________________________________________
provreg mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/provreg

---

From: Eric Brunner-Williams <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2011 11:11:48 -0400

On 4/14/11 10:58 AM, James Gould wrote:
> Gavin,
>
> I want to raise the question for the list whether there is any
> standard trademark authority interface / protocol

I don't think so, however there several candidates with less than 
universal (in theory) coverage that may be (in practice) nearly so, 
for some registries, so perhaps a (IANA ID, TBD, entry) key-value pair 
would, if non-empty, convey useful data, for a practical number of 
registrations for one or more registries.

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, if a hack works for com, then 
it is likely to be adopted by some others, so that's a starting point 
to determine hack utility value for some future .foo's TM registration 
processing data stream.

> since I believe that
> the EPP extension would be highly dependent on the underlying
> interface requirements with the trademark authorities? It would be
> great if representatives of the trademark authorities could
> participate and help collaborate on the EPP extension as well as
> helping define a standard interface for the registrars and registries
> to use. I’m afraid without understanding the underlying interface
> requirements of the trademark authorities that we’ll be guessing on
> what is needed in the EPP extension that could result in additional

Yup.

> --
>
> JG
>
>
>
> *James Gould
> *Principal Software Engineer
> [email-masked]
>
> 703-948-3271
> 21345 Ridgetop Circle
> LS2-2-1
> Dulles, VA 20166
> VerisignInc.com
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From: *Gavin Brown <[email-masked]>
> *Date: *Thu, 14 Apr 2011 06:58:12 -0400
> *To: *InterNetX - Volker Janzen <[email-masked]>
> *Cc: *<[email-masked]>
> *Subject: *Re: [provreg] lp:trademark_name field
>

---

From: Gavin Brown <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2011 16:24:20 +0100

Hi James,

I am actively trying to get input from various trademark experts and 
authorities - including the UK's IPO and WIPO - about whether any such 
standards exist. I completely agree that we need to get the trademark 
data model right or we're not going to get any adoption.

G.

On 14/04/2011 15:58, James Gould wrote:
> extension would be highly dependent on the underlying interface
> requirements with the trademark authorities? It would be great if
> representatives of the trademark authorities could participate and help
> collaborate on the EPP extension as well as helping define a standard
> interface for the registrars and registries to use. I’m afraid without
> understanding the underlying interface requirements of the trademark
> authorities that we’ll be guessing on what is needed in the EPP
> extension that could result in additional custom extensions having to be
> created or having to build additional flexibility into the extension to
> mitigate the unknown.
>
> --
>
> JG
>
>
>
> *James Gould
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------

---

From: Jothan Frakes <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2011 09:04:50 -0700

Hi-

I've reached out to a few of the providers of CHIP-like validations to
comment on this.

Many of the IP systems that are the source for their end result data
were written without the benefit of Unicode, but some of the
clearinghouse providers spend some time in normalizing extended latin
characters into A-Z (ie é->e, ü->u)

USPTO for example is mostly A-Z centric but in some cases do allow
certain characters beyond those typically legal within a non-IDN
domain name, such as extended latin, but candidly, there's no unified
standard.

The Laga system, IPRota, and some of the other clearinghouse services
that will connect up to registries to work with this validation
process on TM are pretty well evolved, but this is better fielded by
them.

-Jothan

Jothan Frakes
+1.206-355-0230 tel
+1.206-201-6881 fax

On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 8:24 AM, Gavin Brown <[email-masked]> wrote:
> standards exist. I completely agree that we need to get the trademark data
> model right or we're not going to get any adoption.
>
> G.
>

---

From: Wil Tan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2011 03:07:46 +1000

> hint to care about Unicode characters in trademark names.

I can see that adding a "type" attribute could help make the intention more
explicit.  However, I'm not sure how will this help in practice. Say you have a
trademark with non-ASCII characters, so you send it as type="loc", and the
registry responds with an error because it only accepts ASCII.  Without this
@type attribute, since the field is an XML "normalizedString" it can contain
pretty much any Unicode characters, you'd just send it along and the
registrywould respond with an error.

I would prefer your latter suggestion to include wording about the
trademark_name field being agnostic to the character repertoire, and that
restrictions are left to the implementor.

On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 10:08 PM, Jens Wagner <[email-masked]> wrote:
> A registry making use of the launchphase extension should publish the set of
> allowed charactes for trademark_name, and should define a function which
> validates if a trademark_name covers a domain name (e.g. a german umlaut Ö
> could cover Ö only, or Ö, O and OE).
>
> I would not a flag like "type='loc/int'" for this purpose, as it only says
> 'unicode' vs. 7-bit ASCII. Some registries might e.g. want to limit e.g. to
> cyrillic chars only.
>

I agree.

On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 10:02 PM, Jim Reid <[email-masked]> wrote:
> It might or might not provide validation. It depends on the trademark, where
> it's registered and who's doing the validation. In most cases I expect the
> filing number and other registration details would be enough. Though there
> may be examples where the string or logo -- assuming it can be rendered in
> Unicode -- will be helpful: Kanji or Arabic trademarks for instance.
>

Indeed, there are quite a few possible configurations of registry,
validation agent, and policies.

> I'm not sure if this field needs to be added. It would be better to ask the
> people who do trademark validations and find out what they have to say about
> this. I suppose they'd say it was better to have this extra info and not
> need it than the other way round.
>

The reason trademark_name and trademark_* fields were included was
that our validation agent at that time asked for them. It has almost
always appeared on past sunrises, most of them managed through a
single validation agent notwithstanding, even if it was probably used
as extra hint as you mentioned.

>
> IMO it would be wise not to use terms like "clearinghouse" or couple this
> EPP stuff too closely to ICANN's gTLD plans/processes.

Agree, and we've avoided using any such terms in the draft.

.wil