The publication of the new Intellectual Property law expected in July was delayed and should be in force in 2014.
As a matter of fact, Myanmar government has to re-draft some additional requirements of WTO (1) and WIPO (2). Until then, the existing law is still effective.
So, there is not yet examination system for Trademark Application or Certificate of Trademark Registration deliveries, but a Declaration of Ownership of Trademark should be filled with Office of the Registrar of Deeds in Yangon, Myanmar capital.
This declaration is an initial evidence of use in case of dispute and can be supported by records publication on local newspaper.
This declaration has no precise validity period, but it is recommended to renew the record in every 3 years. First and last declarations will be strong evidences of use in case of possible disputes.
(1) World Trade Organization.
(2) World Intellectual Property Organization.
The new gTLD program is now fairly advanced and the launches follow one another in rapid succession. So far, 250 Registry Agreements has been signed with the applicants, 106 new gTLDs passed the technical tests and were delegated and 69 have or had a defined Sunrise date.
The first Sunrise period (.SHABAKA) launched on October 31, 2013 was terminated on December 29. Seven Sunrise periods are to be finished on January 25 (bike, clothing, guru, holdings, plumbing, singles and ventures) and another 7 on February 1st.
Among the new gTLDs being launched, the .SEXY is a sensitive one by its meaning and by its registration rules that are totally opened. The cybersquatting in this TLD can be extremely harmful in terms of image and we therefore recommend preventive registrations by taking advantage of the priority Sunrise period that will end on February 9.
As a reminder, a registered trademark in the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH) and corresponding SMD files are mandatory to participate to a Sunrise.
Donuts Sunrise
The Donuts program is about to finish its first Sunrise period. Find below all ongoing and forthcoming periods:
Sunrise from 26 November 2013 to 25 January 2014 : the new gTLDs offered are .BIKE, .CLOTHING, .GURU, .HOLDINGS, .PLUMBING, .SINGLES and .VENTURES
Sunrise from 3 December 2013 to 1st February 2014: the new gTLDs available are .CAMERA, .EQUIPMENT, .ESTATE, .GALLERY, .GRAPHICS, .LIGHTING and .PHOTOGRAPHY
Sunrise from 10 December 2013 to 8 February 2014 : the new gTLDs are .CONTRACTORS, .CONSTRUCTION, .DIRECTORY, .KITCHEN, .LAND, .TODAY and .TECHNOLOGY
Sunrise from 17 December 2013 to 15 February 2014 : the available new gTLDs are: .DIAMONDS, .ENTERPRISES, .TIPS, .VOYAGE
Sunrise from 24 December 2013 to 22 February 2014 : .CAREERS, .PHOTOS, .RECIPES, .SHOES
Sunrise from 31 December 2013 to 1 March 2014 : the new gTLDs are as follows : .LIMO, .DOMAINS, .CAB
Sunrise from 31 December 2013 to 8 March 2014 : the offered new gTLD is .COMPANY
Sunrise from 7 January to 8 March 2014 : the new gTLDs available are : .COMPUTER, .CENTER, .SYSTEMS, .ACADEMY, .MANAGEMENT
Sunrise from 14 January au 15 March 2014 : the new gTLDs available are : .EMAIL, .SOLUTIONS, .SUPPORT, .BUILDERS, .TRAINING
Sunrise from 21 January au 22 March 2014 : the new gTLDs are : .EDUCATION, .INSTITUTE, .REPAIR, .CAMP, .GLASS
Sunrise from 28 January au 29 March 2014 : the new gTLDs offered are : .SOLAR, .COFFEE, .INTERNATIONAL, .HOUSE, .FLORIST
The first Early Access Program periods will start on January 29, 2014 for the .BIKE, .CLOTHING, .GURU, .HOLDINGS, .PLUMBING, .SINGLES and .VENTURES. The Early Access Program is a period that offers fixed price domain names each day on a “1st come-1st served” basis, the price varying on the first day from $ 10,500 to $ 125 on 5th, 6th and 7th days.
.MENU and .UNO Sunrises
.MENU and .UNO Sunrises are opened from 9 December 2013 and will end on 7 February 2014.
The targets of .MENU are restaurants, chefs and every person interested in cookery. As the term “menu” is used in 33 different languages, the gTLD .MENU will gather a large online community throughout the world.
Dot Latin LLC registry offers its .UNO to connect all Spanish and Latin communities and aims to provide instant recognition to sites by companies and consumers.
Sunrise for . みんな, the first and only Japanese IDN
Google launched its Sunrise for its first new gTLD, the Japanese IDN みんな(mee-nuh) which means “everybody”. The registration period will run until 14 February 2014.
Sunrises for geographical new gTLDs
The regiodot registry offers the new gTLD .RUHR for the eponymous German region during the current Sunrise that will end on 20 February 2014. A local presence in Germany is mandatory to register a domain name. A “RUHR phase” will be reserved to inhabitants and companies of this region between the Sunrise and General Availability periods.
The dotkiwi already launched its Sunrise for the .KIWI. This period will run until March 17. There is no geographical restriction to register domain names.
The .BERLIN will be available from 14 February to 16 March 2014. It will be convenient that one of the contacts (owner, administrative or technical) has a postal address in Berlin.
Uniregistry Sunrise for .SEXY and .TATOO
The Sunrise for both .SEXY and .TATOO new gTLDs will be opened to trademark owners until 9 February 2014.
The new gTLD .CEO in a ‘Start-Date Sunrise’
The beginning of the Sunrise period for .CEO will be on 10 February and will last 30 days until March 12. In a ‘Start-Date Sunrise’, domain names will be registered on a ‘first come-first served basis’ unlike the auctions held during ‘End-Date Sunrises’.
The .ONL to be known ONLINE !
The .ONL Sunrise will be opened until 15 March 2014. To own a .ONL will grant to the Internet user a better access to websites in this new gTLD if they type the words ‘onl’ or ‘online’ in the search engine.
Sunrise for Chinese gTLDs .在线 and .中文网
The registry for .在线(online) and .中文网(website) announced that its Sunrise will run from 16 January to 17 March 2014.
The .BUZZ available from 15 January 2014
dotStrategy was awarded the .BUZZ by ICANN and the new gTLD will be introduced during the Sunrise from 15 January to 18 March 2014.
In the context of ICANN’s new Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA), which took effect from 1st January 2014, domain name owners of gTLDs should expect to receive the following 3 emails:
An e-mail requesting confirmation of the e-mail address of the rights’ holder
An e-mail asking for the WHOIS information to be updated if necessary,
An e-mail notifying the expiration of the domain name sent 15 days before the expiry date whether or not the domain name has been renewed.
The e-mail to confirm the e-mail address of the rights’ holder is a mandatory requirement that must be met within 15 days of receipt.
In the event of failure to provide confirmation, the domain name will be suspended but would however be reactivated once confirmation is received.
In a ruling of June 21, 2013 (1), the Paris Court of Appeal rejected a counterfeiting action filed by the SPPF (the French collecting society for record labels’ neighboring rights in sound recordings) against Youtube for allowing internet users to post counterfeit videos.
In 2008 Youtube had withdrawn over 200 contentious videos from its platform following a cease-and-desist letter from the SPPF specifying that the rights holders had not given their consent. Since a large number of these videos were subsequently posted several months later, the SPPF filed for an action against Youtube and Google.
The Paris Court of Appeal ruled that only the judicial authority has the power to impose on hosting service providers a duty to temporary and targeted surveillance in accordance with article 6-I-7 paragraph 2 of the law to generate confidence in the digital economy (LCEN).
It is worth recalling that as a result of combining sections of articles 6-I-2 and 6-I-5 of the LCEN legislation, hosting service providers are not subject to any general obligation to monitor the data stored or any general obligation to research the facts or circumstances arising from illicit activities, . Besides, the withdrawing of content by a host site cannot be undertaken without prior notice.
The Paris Court of Appeal confirmed the lack of obligation on the part of hosting service providers to make a permanent removal, and restated the requirement for a further notification when withdrawn contents are re-posted. In other words, every new posting containing illicit content requires a new withdrawal notification.
This ruling follows the precedent set by the High Court (Cour de Cassation) in three decisions of July 12, 2012 (2), in which it refused to enforce an obligation for permanent withdrawal, considered to be a duty of general surveillance not covered by the terms of the LCEN legislation. When illicit content is posted once again by a different internet user, it should be considered as a new case requiring a further notification in line with the requirements of article L6-5 LCEN. To support the duty to permanent withdrawal would imply the modification of LCEN article 6 and would require an overhaul of e-commerce guidelines.
As a result, it is even more important today to monitor social networks in order to respond appropriately.
(1) Paris Court of Appeal, pole 5 Chamber 2, decision of June 21 3013, SPPF versus American company YOUTUBE LLC, GOOGLE France and GOOGLE Ireland ltd.
(2) Decisions of July 12 2012, no 11-13-666; no 11-15.165 and 11-15.188; no 11-13.669
On April 2013, the British Virgin Islands (BVI) passed a new Trade Marks Act in order to bring to date the 19th century country’s trademark.
Among the features of the new law:
– the classification system will be based on the Nice Classification unless the Financial Services Commission decides to use another one,
– only a registered trademark agent can apply for the registration of a trademark,
– it will be possible to claim priority for a trademark already registered in a Paris Convention country or a World Trade Organization member,
– once a trademark is registered, the renewal period will be 10 years. However, if a trademark has been registered before commencement of the Act, its 7-year renewal period will be unchanged until expiration, and
– for marks not registered in the BVI, use of ® or the word “registered” without being able to show a valid registered certificate from another jurisdiction is subject to a fine.
The open auction of previously reserved domain names has already generated over 50 million yuan, or more than 8 million dollars.
The auction of domain GAME.CN produced the highest offer of nearly 3 million yuan after 700 bids.
In second place was domain name GW.CN which is the Chinese abbreviation for “gou wu” or “guo wang“, meaning “shopping” or “national network”. Bids climbed to over 2 million yuan.
The domain LB.CN came next with over 1 million yuan. This can stand for “lao ban“, “libao” or “lian bang” which mean respectively “boss”, “gift” and “federal”.
The fourth best auction result was for the domain name CM.CN, much sought-after by investors and Chinese “domainers” and which brought in over 1 million yuan.
Thanks to these auctions the funds accumulated – after tax deductions – will be given to charity.
With effect from 8 January 2014, residents, companies and organizations based in Iceland, Lichtenstein and Norway can register .eu domain names.
This decision by the European Commission is based on regulation EC 733/2002 of the European Parliament and Council which foresaw the extension of .eu to the whole of the EEA.
The registration policy and the Whois policy, as well as the Terms and Conditions with regards to privacy were also updated.
After leading a study concerning the likelihood and impact of collisions between applied-for new gTLD strings and non-delegated TLDs, ICANN suggests to the community mitigation measures in order to avoid collisions.
Those problems may occur when local top-level domains in private namespace reach the public DNS while they already exist or when certificate authorities issue X.509 certificates for domain names that are not resolvable in the public DNS.
The study emphasises three categories of strings by the potential risk of name space collision: low risk, uncalculated risk and high risk. For each one of them, the program offers a determined and made to measure management process.
In this way,
for low risk gTLD strings, the study proposes proceeding with contracting and delegation of these strings but recommending additional mitigation measures without impacting their timeline for delegation,
for uncalculated risk gTLD strings, the delivery date should be extended by 3 to 6 months, and
for high risk strings which are .home and .corp, the process will be delayed until those strings goes to low risk category.
The new gTLD string delegation process is long and delicate. At this stage, all these steps are proposals only and opened to the Internet community’s comments.
The report published by European Commission for the year 2012 presents statistical information on the number of detentions and other customs actions over the past year(1).
The number of individual articles detained are down over 65%. Indeed 114,772,812 articles have been detained in 2001 to 39,917,445 in 2012. However, regarding instances of imports, the results have remained quite stable (91,245 detentions in 2011 to 90,473 in 2012).
This shift is due to the availability of goods online which infringe intellectual property rights. The goods arrive to Europe generally through post and couriers.
The articles come for the most part from China for CD, DVD and tobacco, Marocco for foodstuffs and Bulgaria for packaging materials.
In 90% of the cases, detained goods were destroyed either after the owner of the goods and the right holder agreed on destruction or after the right holder initiated a court action. The report says also that 8% of detentions have been released because the right owner didn’t react to a notification or because the goods were genuine.
It is important to set up a customs surveillance and seizures. Our law firm can advice and assist you to set up a monitoring of your company trademark at customs level in France, as well as in the European Union.
Dreyfus has been nominated “Boutique IP Law Firm of the Year” (1) in “Acquisition International” magazine’s “Legal Awards 2013”.
Nathalie Dreyfus explains in an interview that the firm’s expertise in the protection and enforcement of trademarks on the internet has played a key role in this recognition.
Since 10 years, Dreyfus routinely handles litigations and has acquired the necessary experience to anticipate the outcomes of disputes.
Dreyfus also points out that there are some trends in the field of intellectual property. Examples would include not only the opportunity to file – and protect – an international trademark in many countries in one shot, but also “the interdependence between intellectual property and the digital economy” with the launch of new gTLDs which will accelerate the need “to adjust the legal strategies of companies relating to the presence of their trademarks on the internet.”
Dreyfus has also been described as “excellent” in the rankings of the best IP law firms of “Décideurs” magazine (2). We find out what serves to distinguish the firm from the rest: a stronger “relationship between the protection of intellectual property and new technologies, especially concerning domain names” and its active involvement “with arbitration centers and with ICANN in particular.”
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The publication of the new Intellectual Property law expected in July was delayed and should be in force in 2014.
