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Access To WHOIS Information To Be Restricted?

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A story on law.com today states that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which controls the registries for domain names with the popular .com, .net and .org top level domain extensions, will likely be voting in September on a proposal to limit the public availability of WHOIS information. This proposal has sparked a battle between trademark owners and their legal representatives on the one hand, who favour more disclosure, and privacy advocates on the other, who favour less disclosure.

The ICANN council is considering three options: Continue to let domain name owners’ personal, technical and administrative contact information be viewed by all Internet users; display only the name and country of an owner and allow that person or entity to designate additional information for a point of contact; or keep the current system and allow owners to cloak contact information only if there’s a risk to a registrant’s personal safety.

 See our post of February 27, 2007 for details on the status of the proposal to restrict public access to WHOIS information of registrants of .ca domain names.

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Neil Melliship is a Partner and co-chair of the Intellectual Property and Information Technology practice groups at the Vancouver-based Canadian law firm of Clark Wilson LLP. Neil is a lawyer and a registered Canadian Trademark Agent, who actively speaks and writes on trademark and other IP issues including those relating to the Internet, domain name disputes and e-commerce. Neil is consistently rated as a Leading Trademark Practitioner—Individuals: Prosecution and Strategy, by the World Trademark Review (WTR) 1000. Neil is also listed in the Canadian Legal Lexpert Directory as Rated Repeatedly Recommended in the area of Intellectual Property. He has also been repeatedly named by Best Lawyers in Canada in the categories of Intellectual Property Law, Technology Law and Information Technology Law.