As this was a closed, invitation-only meeting in an organisation whose DNA is openness and transparency, I would like to request that the names and affiliations of the individuals participating in the meeting be published.

I am concerned that simply listing the interests represented gives an inaccurate picture of the people present and wrongly suggests that this was a balanced meeting. Specifically, there was a single non-commercial representative present for only part of the meeting, and another dialing in whilst multiple (a dozen?) IP and business constituency representatives attended.

Given that the individuals representing the partisan IPC/BC proposal greatly out numbered other groups, it is only fair for the community at large to have the necessary information to make up its own mind about the numerical imbalance of invited participants.

Don’t get me wrong. The hand-picked “stakeholder representatives” identified some good ideas. I like the ideas numbered 1 to 8 in Fadi’s posting. That does not mean they are sufficient. The TMCH is still fundamentally on the wrong footing.

The “benevolent monarch” approach to setting up the TMCH should stop here. I was good Fadi refused to blindly sign the proposed (and secret) TMCH contracts. But there is no point in replacing a murky process with an equally opaque one.

ICANN still wants to give Deloitte a world-wide monopoly. The new proposal simply creates two monopolies (one for Deloitte and one for IBM). That is even worse than before, requiring tripartite ICANN-Deloitte-IBM negotiations even for tiny improvements.

As a monopoly, the TMCH will not only be expensive and dysfunctional, it will do more harm than good.

A monopolistic TMCH is also completely unjustified, even on the grounds of “urgency”. No offense to Deloitte and IBM, ICANN staff, the hand-picked “representatives” and Fadi: all have seem to have lost sight of the cause. The purpose is to build infrastructure. Handing out rents and fiefdoms can be a way to get a job done, but the privileges should never be the objective. If handouts are used, keep them small, reversible and subject to competition.

It is easy to build a distributed system with competitive TMCH providers. Actually, it is easier than the monopolistic approach. ICANN managed to do this for the UDRP dispute resolution service providers. Why is it unable to do the same for TMCH providers?

If there are concerns with timelines, we can start with one TMCH provider and add more of them within months. The essence is to have competition and diversity between them. In the medium term, there should be at least 10 TMCH providers instead of just Deloitte. But the system must be built from the start to allow multiple TMCH providers.

Another concern is the strange silence on data ownership. Why? Has ICANN already sold out to Deloitte? I hope not. All TMCH databases must be ICANN’s property. Providers must be required to deposit it with an escrow agent. Each TMCH provider can of course be escrow agent for other TMCH providers.

Next is data “confidentiality”. By definition, trademarks are not confidential. In certain cases, a new trademark registration needs to remain non-discoverable for some time, lest bad actors misuse its discovery to register it in other jurisdictions. But the TMCH providers should only flag a record as non-discoverable for a limited period, such as 2 years after registration of the underlying mark, and only upon express request by the trademark holder.

Finally, the technical approach. First and foremost, it must support the distributed competitive model. That can easily be done if the TMCH uses the DNS.

The only thing needed is a central zone file, containing NAPTR pointers to each of the TMCH providers holding data regarding a given character string. The TMCH providers themselves can distribute the data with several methods, such as DNS NAPTR records, web services or file distribution. I insist: not using the DNS for the TMCH would be as if a forklift manufacturer used ox carts inside its factories.