A new decision and a new policy:

• In a recent decision (Enterprise Rent-A-Car Company v. David Bedford ), Enterprise won handily in its dispute over the bank of names registered by Mr. Bedford, a BC domainer. The dozen domain names (enterpriseautorental.ca, enterprisecarrentals.ca, enterprisecanada.ca, etc.) were used with a pay-per-click advertising scheme and this decision provides a useful precedent for trade-mark owners, along with the panelist’s finding that the test under the CDRP is one of resemblance, not confusion.
• CIRA, Canada’s official dot-ca domain name registry, is introducing changes to the WHOIS policy, starting in June 2008.  Under the new policy, private information about individual registrants will no longer be accessible through the dot-ca WHOIS database. The WHOIS information of corporate registrants will be displayed by default. This means that in order to contact an individual owner of a dot-ca domain name – say, for the purposes of proposing a transaction, or complainaing about trade-mark abuse – a new “administrative process” will be used.  This new process is under development, but it is expected to be an online form which will automatically forward correspondence to anonymous registrants, via CIRA. 

 

Calgary – 10:30 MST