Specific Trademark Issues

STI is the abbreviation for Specific Trademark Issues. It is also sometimes referred to as Special Trademark Issues. It was mostly adopted as a resolution by the Generic Names Support Organization (GNSO) on 28 October 2009. It was basically proposed by the GNSO when the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) sent a letter to the GNSO requesting to review the policy implications of specific trademark protection mechanisms for the sake of the proposed new gTLD Program. The STI consisted of the following representatives:

• Representatives from each Stakeholder Group
• Nominating Committee Appointees
• GAC

These representatives were tasked to analyze the specific rights protection mechanisms, which needs to be included in the Draft Application Guidebook or DAG.

Members

The STI mostly consists of attorneys from all the Stakeholder Groups, and people who have lots of experience in trademark law and Internet and a few numbers of non-lawyers.

Principles

The STI works on the following principles:

1. Unanimous consensus
2. Rough consensus: This is a situation wherein there is a small minority that disagrees about a topic but majority agree
3. Strong support: This means that there is a large number of opposition
4. No consensus

Work

The STI after its creation was assigned a huge task which included processing and addressing trademark issues as well as providing solutions to the benefit of both the non-commercial users as well as those of the trademark owners and the DNS community as a whole.

The STI published a report in which it provided its vital recommendations regarding the creation of a TMC and Uniform Rapid Suspension procedure. It was mostly created to protect the trademarks in the new gTLD program.

ICANN and STI

The ICANN created the STI to provide the recommendations about how the trademark issues should be handled keeping in mind the new gTLDs program and expansion of the Root.

Generic Names Supporting Organization. Develops and recommends to the Board substantive policies relating to generic top-level domains and other responsibilities set forth in the Bylaws (ICANN Bylaws).

Governmental Advisory Committee. Considers and provides advice on the activities of ICANN as they relate to concerns of governments, particularly matters where there may be an interaction between ICANN's policies and various laws and international agreements or where they may affect public policy issues (ICANN Bylaws).