Administration Focuses Heavily on Advancing Digital Trade
In complementary hearings, the US International Trade Commission (USITC) and the US Trade Representative (USTR), both took deep dives into the benefits of digital trade and opportunities to promote digital services trade. As SIIA members well know, the global nature of the digital economy makes it more critical than ever to eliminate barriers to digital trade. At both hearings, this was the key message of SIIA testimony from SIIA Senior Policy Director David LeDuc, urging policymakers and trade negotiators to continue working to enable the unfettered flow of data across borders, to combat ICT localization requirements and ensure a foundation of strong IP protection. For more information, see SIIA’s Digital Discourse Blog.
House Committees Take on Cybersecurity
One month after the President signed an Executive Order (EO) on cybersecurity for critical infrastructure, and launched a process to develop a cybersecurity framework, several House Committees are considering the issue this week. At issue the center of debate is what is necessary through legislation in the wake of the EO. Specifically, the Judiciary, Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees will all hold hearings on the issue, while the Committee on Science, Space and Tech will consider two bills focused largely on cyber R&D: The Cybersecurity Enhancement Act (H.R. 756), and the Advancing America’s Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Act of 2013 (H.R. 967).
Meanwhile at a Joint Senate hearing last week, Administration officials provided an update about their ongoing efforts to develop a cybersecurity roadmap, or voluntary industry cyber standards, and outlined the White House goals for legislation.
ICANN’s Trademark Clearinghouse to Launch March 26th
Recently, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced that its new Trademark Clearinghouse would go live on March 26th. This reflects the reality that after several years, ICANN is finally getting close to accepting the first new Top Level Domains as part of its process to exponentially expanding the number of TLDs from the existing 20 TLDs presently in operation (such as .com, .net and .org). It is widely anticipated that the first new TLDs will “go live” in the third quarter of this year. Once this happens TLDs can begin to accept registrations for second-level domain names (e.g., siia.net), which could include anything — including your companies valuable trademarks.
Cybersquatting is likely to occur, just as it does in .com and other gTLDs. The new gTLD program includes several mechanisms intended to mitigate this concern. A crucial component of these mechanisms is this “Trademark Clearinghouse.” Trademark owners must record their marks in the Trademark Clearinghouse in order to qualify for the new trademark protection mechanisms, including: (1) a “Trademark Claims Service,” which notifies potential domain name registrants of corresponding trademark rights; (2) a “Sunrise” registration period of at least 30 days in which eligible trademark owners can obtain a domain name registration for their marks prior to launch of the TLD; and (3) a “Uniform Rapid Suspension” procedure, in which trademark owners can initiate proceedings to terminate an infringing domain name that is in use.
David LeDuc is Senior Director, Public Policy at SIIA. He focuses on e-commerce, privacy, cyber security, cloud computing, open standards, e-government and information policy. Follow the SIIA public policy team on Twitter at @SIIAPubPolicy.