What I find laughable is that the challenge speculators have ponied up their money to take a chance at names like business.info so both WIPO and Afilias are making additional money from the same name. How is this preferable to using a lottery, or an auction, or how is this is even distinguishable from such? Not that I'm in favor of sunrise for all new TLDs, but for those that use it, if this whole rigamarole is necessary after the fact, why not just do it properly in the first place? Is it because Afilias and registrars would then only get paid once for the name, and WIPO wouldn't get anything? No doubt even more companies would have put up $50k for a chance at running an ICANN TLD if they were aware they'd be allowed to sell a single name numerous times.

I'd reported earlier that the first .info WIPO sunrise challenge results were in, though incomplete and confusing. Although there have been updates and additions and changes, that still holds true. Where is the actual text of the decisions, as one can access with WIPO UDRP rulings? Well, perhaps we'll never see them. From my wording link above:

10. Center Decisions

(a)...The Center shall not be required to state reasons for its decision.

Does this mean that initial fraudulent registrants of generic names will get to keep them...

Some have covered that angle and got trademarks on sex et cetera, and no doubt more will do so on good generic names in advance of future TLDs. The trademark protection folks tried to control the namespace, so some speculators are using their own trademark process against them and have just moved up a level to become trademark squatters. How they'll be removed from there is anyone's guess. You can presumably get a trademark for sex with regards to a brand of table or boat or lightbulb through the USPTO, and there are probably quite a few non-US trademark offices with lower standards. The trademark lobby should have left well enough alone. Sue those who are clearly infringing, sue them large and make an example of them, and leave everyone else alone. Instead they try to extend trademark protection to where it doesn't fit and wind up making it a bigger mess. -g