ABSTRACT
In 2009, securitisation of trademark interests on the Internet was again at the forefront of ICANN’s policies. As ICANN was announcing its plans to launch its much-anticipated expansion of the Root through the addition of new gTLDs, trademark owners feared that the current protection mechanisms would not be sufficient to sustain and safeguard their rights online. Seeking, therefore, to address the addition of new gTLDs with stricter ‘regulatory’ measures, an Implementation Recommendations Team (IRT) was tasked to review ICANN’s new gTLD policy and provide recommendations on the best way to protect trademarks online. The team submitted its recommendations in a lengthy report and sought to
… provide … a tapestry of globally-effective solutions, which …, if taken together and not significantly unpinned, [would] help reduce the incidence and severity of trademark abuse in the new gTLDs.1
