Excessive sunrise fees, delay to strings and cybersquatting levels: takeaways from ICANN 49

The US government’s announcement that it intends to transfer responsibility for Internet Assigned Numbers Authority functions to the internet community was one of the big talking points at ICANN 49, held in Singapore in March. However, other issues of significance for trademark owners were also discussed – not least the Trademark Clearinghouse’s (TMCH) revelation that it had delivered over 500,000 claims notices as of March 25, with 95% of the queries for trademark terms that triggered claims notices not being followed through to a live registration. According to the TMCH, the fact that around 475,000 applications were dissuaded from progressing to registration was evidence that “the deterrent is working”.