Building a trusted namespace for Trademarks

A proposal to the World Intellectual Property Organization

It is well known that Trademarks are key elements that contribute in insure the stability and efficiency of commerce. So far, trademarks have not been truly been integrated into the internet domain names, creating an endless stream of litigations. Namespace classes may provide a unique opportunity to build from inception a trusted Namespace for trademarks not only for Web sites but also for the Internet of Things,

Lets first examine the current situation, and then present what Namespace classes are, and how they work, before exploring specific opportunities for Trademarks.

Concerning the Internet of things, the nameservice that has been adopted by EPC Global and GS1 is the Object Naming Service (ONS). The ONS operates through the DNS ( which is managed by ICANN ), for example an ONS object identifier is translated into the domain name :

000024.0614141.sgtin.id.onsepc.com which relies on the .com gTLD and the onsepc.com domain name. What is staggering is that all the ONS namespace, that should become orders of magnitude larger that all the existing DNS namespace goes through only one domain name !. The secondary namespace xxx.onsepc.com as for all domain names is privately managed by the domain name owner that has all control over this namespace. There is nothing new in that regard. This ONS namespace is managed through a database maintained by Verisign. Recently, another ONS root based in Europe :onsepc1.eu has been added, whose database is maintained by Orange Business Services. Another ONS root is proposed in China.

The resolution of the .com and .eu extension is managed by ICANN. The resolution of onsepc.com domain name is under ICANN control, while the onsepc1.eu is under control of the European ccTLD : EURid .

Concerning the Next Generation Networks, whose general idea behind NGN is that one network transports all information and services (voice, data, and all sorts of media such as video) by encapsulating these into packets, like it is on the Internet. NGNs are commonly built around the Internet Protocol, and therefore the term "all-IP" is also sometimes used to describe the transformation towards NGN (quoted from Wikipedia ). ITU offers a detailed definition of NGN. There is one specific namespace for NGN : ENUM, a telephone number mapping managed by ITU.

Towards an effective opening to competition through the use of DNS class namespaces

It is important to underline the little known fact that the current DNS system was designed from the outset as a naming tool available for networks other than the Internet, specifically the Chaosnet and Hesiod networks. These networks, now only of historical interest, were never under the governance of the IETF or ICANN. They are constituting very significant legal precedents.

Such a design is implemented with the help of a parameter named class that defines a network with its own specific and distinct namespace. Classes are defined by the RFC 2929. Each class is a autonomous namespace with its own DNS root servers and its own governance.

Starting from the years 1995, implementation of a number of alternative DNS roots fragmented and perturbed the IN class managed by ICANN. Therefore in 2001, ICANN itself recommended to make use of unused classes, especially one of the 256 classes for a "private use" for the purpose of an experimentation. Alternative DNS roots have been commercial and technical failures.

The Internet is using the class "IN" whose namespace is managed by ICANN. The Chaosnet and Hesiod networks class parameter value are respectively CH and HS. For all practical purposes, the field class only currently takes the value "IN", but there are up to 65,000 classes available and unused.

The network software of an internet user includes a DNS client software, also called "resolver" that is pointing to a DNS server that shall answer with an IP address to a request about a domain name. DNS clients appear in many applications (browser, ftp, email client, etc. ..). When a user accesses to the network, in most cases, the DNS server is determined by default by the ISP,. The DNS server, also by default, answers within the class "IN".

It is the RFC 2929 that takes care of the question of classes. In addition to CH and HS classes and 256 classes that anyone can freely use them for "private use", the other 65,000 classes are not yet assigned classes, and may be assigned by "IETF consensus". If IETF were to decide to block classes assignments to stifle competition, one could legitimately ask why IETF, whose governance sphere is limited to the Internet, is entitled to assign a class to a network other than his own ie: the Internet. Under international public law, governance and arbitrage between networks should be the responsibility of an international organization such as the International Telecommunication Union, a situation that has been acknowledged by ICANN in its article 4 of incorporation: ICANN “shall operate […] its activities in conformity with relevant principles of international law and applicable international conventions and local law” and “shall corporate as appropriate with relevant international organizations.” -

It is proposed to create other IP based networks, and thus using the same technical pipes as the Internet, but legally distinct, precisely because they are using distinct namespace classes.

For a class to be usable in practice, it is required that the DNS client or "resolver" is able to receive from the DNS server the IP address corresponding to a domain name in this class. The BIND^¹ software is the best known among DNS server software but there are a few others^² .Most DNS clients and servers do not implement completely the RFCs, including RFC 2929. The field class is often considered as a fixed value with IN. Therefore, these software clients and servers shall have to be updated and that the class field must correspond to a true variable. This does not offer any particular technical difficulty.

There is no namespace fragmentation. The parallel use of several classes, is possible: users may use, at the same time, concurrent systems because they can be supported by the same DNS servers. It is transparent to the user, as shall be the transition from IPv4 to IPv6, which occurs at a different level. There is no conceptual problem.

Users are going to indicate the class with an extra field in front of the domain name. The syntax might be class% placed in front of the domain name. For example for class 4d (corresponding to the network Net4D) and CT class (corresponding to the Cyrillic network Сеть meanig network in Russian) could have the following URLs:

ст%Москва.ро woukd suffice. For a person writing only Cyrillic, one may envision that she/he set in her/his browser the class CT as the class by default so that the person would have only to type Москва.ро , without the need of any ASCII letters.

Implementation of classes should facilitate the emergence of new ways towards an improved use of the Web. More oriented towards new developments, this new network fabric shall be more dynamic, shall provide a new frontier to innovations, and shall be open to civil society and to linguistic diversity, developments, as well as meeting the expectations of innovative industries and emerging countries

DNS classes could empower the semantic web, using markups and tags of content according metadata and logic languages schemes (ontologies), allowing for far more relevant access to data than in full text. It is therefore proposed to implement classes, called semantic classes , where the legal and technological innovation lies in the fact that owners of domain names are contractually obliged to follow a specific ontology, or to lose their domain names. It would be therefore possible to create namespaces as zones where metadata may be trusted.

As an important consequence, this would redefine the text-based search engines' market, which is currently almost a monopoly, to allow the emergence for new search engines using metadata as well as text.

A very important point is that classes could use UTF8 encoding, allowing a natural, simpler and more efficient implementation of multilingualism, instead of the current system, whose progress is very slow, which is based on ASCII and transcription UTF8 – ASCII.

Yet another very important point is the Internet of things whose governance is nascent and whose namespace is expected to become orders of magnitude larger than the current namespace. If for any reason, good or bad, the Handle System does not emerge as the namespace technology for the Internet of things, then, at the very least, the current object Naming Service (ONS) should be improved so that it operates with one or several classes in order to truly constitute independent and interoperable Networks of Objects. It should be investigated if one class of the Networks of Objects could interface with the Handle System.

Last but not least, concerning Next Generation Networks, it should be quite logical that next generation namespaces should be developed using classes.

From a political point of view, the existence of new classes is a kind of revolution in the governance of the namespaces of IP-based networks. It is a constructive revolution however, because related governances may co-exist technically.

Concerning DNS security, a centralized security could then be replaced by distinct decentralized security systems related to each class, offering a commercial and political independence for all players. In the DNSSEC system the root signing authority may be distinct according to each class.

Concerning economics, classes are opening the namespace market to competition between potentially 65,000 players and would end the monopoly of the historic operator.

At the scientific and technological level, the classes allow innovation (eg semantic web, Multilingualism, M2M, etc......) to flourish.

According to the Nice agreement, the International Classification of Trademarks comprises the 45 classes. It is proposed to affect 45 DNS classes among the 65000 classes available to map directly the 45 classes of trademarks into the namespace. In this way, brands related to different classes could co-exist peacefully and legally in the cyberspace. Each brand could have a domain name in a different DNS class related to its relevant trademark class. This would solve legal problems in a coherent fashion. It would also allow search engines to take into account the trademark class parameter, which they cannot do at this moment. The DNS classes are akin to a new dimension in the Namespace

It is very important to underline that the DNS Mark classes are of interest not only for marketing information concerning web sites, but could be of utmost importance concerning the Internet of things, where it becomes crucial to check if a product is really related to the brand it claims to be. It could be a tool against counterfeiting.

Therefore, WIPO while creating and managing the DNS Mark classes could in a position sell to trademarks owners, not only trusted domain names but value-added services such as helping trademarks owners to maintain their ontologies ( metadata related to trademarks ) for their products.

Needless to say, this management could provide WIPO with an additional, and significant financial revenue stream.

If the the general deployment of classes cannot be considered immediately - except in areas under centralized governance – one should consider experimental periods in various areas or in various communities having an interest in the project.

Experiments may be performed not only at the level of a country, a region, a city, using one of the 256 classes scheduled for private use, but also over a virtual community spread all over the world.

In the case of a region in the geographical sense, for the experimental area, implementation of classes must be ensured in :

2) servers and DNS clients, servers and other web applications, at, local or remotely located companies, operating in the area;

3) servers and DNS clients, servers and other web applications, at local (or even national) authorities, associations as well as individuals operating in the area :

In the case of trademarks, the virtual community approach might be better suited to be an experimental area. One could start with a virtual community composed with stakeholders where the concern for trademarks is at a premium ( professional buyers; etc...).

The need for DNS servers of ISPs to implement DNS classes resolving is not as important in this case, if we provide gateways where the DNS classes resolving is implemented. Community stakeholders, if they notice that the DNS servers of their ISPs are not resolving DNS classes could use gateways.

Search engines, provided that search engines robots can access at one place on the planet to DNS Marks classes, may reflect this information into their answers to queries from all over the world.

Namespace DNS Mark classes, under WIPO direct governance, while enabling a trusted namespace for brands, is going to reinforce legal and commercial security, vehicle for economic growth. It would certainly constitute a key strategic element that WIPO could bring forward in order to confront the global economic crisis.

1http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIND

2http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_DNS_server_software

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