AMMAN - "Spoofing, cybersquatting, protection of famous trademarks, translation and transliteration, and dispute resolution procedures are among several legal challenges that face trademark owners with the introduction of internationalized domain names (IDNs)," said Mr. Charles Sha’ban, Abu-Ghazaleh Intellectual Property (AGIP) Executive Director during the "Trademarks in Cyberspace 2005: Trademarks on the Internet 10 Years On" Forum.
Mr. Sha’ban discussed several vital points concerning the Internationalized (multilingual) Domain Names (IDNs) with special focus on IDNs and intellectual property protection.
"Multilingual trademarks are protected either by transliteration or translation according to the country," he said, "or through the international laws that are capable of providing protection for multilingual trademarks, in particular, the international treaties like, the Paris Convention, TRIPS, Trademark Law Treaty, and the Madrid Protocol," he added.
The event witnessed thorough discussions on the evolution of country code Top Level Domain Names (ccTLDs) and IDNs, and generic Top Level Domain Names (gTLDs), in addition to issues that arise in daily practice, such as Whois, traceability, and how to take enforcement issues against cyber squatters from around the world.
"The forum was designed to explore issues relating to the use, protection and policies of trademark use on the Internet," said Mr. Sha’ban, who was the only representative for the Arab region in the forum.
"In addition to networking with some of the world’s leading experts and colleagues on Internet law, I had the opportunity to meet our clients and associates and interact with them," he added.
Along with domain names, the forum incorporated several sessions such as "Trademark Issues in Cyberspace" which discussed many new issues covering keyword advertising, pop-up and pop-under advertising, mousetrapping, phishing and pharming, screen-scraping, Google bombing and search engine optimization.
The Sept. 12 - 13 Forum, organized by the International Trademark Association (INTA) in Vancouver, hosted speakers from Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Kirkpatrick & Stockton, Bird & Bird, eBay and others.