auDA (the Australian domain name administrator) has issued a call for proposals for the creation of new 2LDs in the .au domain space and is also seeking public input on the proposal to reactivate two currently inactive 2LDs - conf.au and info.au.

Currently, the active open 2LDs are: com.au, net.au, org.au, asn.au, and id.au.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has issued a timely reminder that trade mark and domain name owners should exercise caution before paying what appear to be renewal notices.

There are a growing number of services issuing documents that look like invoices for listing registrations in registers that offer no benefit to owners.

A list of some of the issuers of these notices is here. Recipients of such notices should ignore them. However, in the event of any uncertainty, contact your IP service provider for advice.

Rod Beckstrom has replaced Australian Paul Twomey (who has retired) as the head of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the world’s Internet domain name regulator.

The announcement is here.

In a decision of the National Arbitration Forum (US) given on 24 June under ICANN’s UDRP, world famous “sporting personality” Tiger Woods failed to have the domain name charlieaxelwoods.com transferred to himself.  Charlie Axel Woods is the name of Tiger’s son, born on 8 February 2009 – the respondent registered the domain name on 9 February 2009 and on 18 February offered it on eBay with the description “This is your chance to own the domain to a future golf legend or use it in some way to extort the current golf legend for some extra cash”.

While Tiger thus appeared to have a strong case in relation to the ‘bad faith’ element, the panellist dismissed the complaint, holding that it failed on the first element of the 3-pronged UDRP because the name was not a common law trademark or service mark and was not similar to any of Tiger’s trade marks.  For a complaint to be successful all 3 elements must be proved, and the panellist held that there was no need to consider whether Tiger’s case had been made on the other 2 elements (whether the respondent had any rights in the domain name and whether the name had been registered or used in bad faith).

Further to our post on Thursday 11 June, Facebook has announced that it is allowing Facebook page administrators to request usernames for trade marks previously blocked by them.

It appears that the first applicant for a trade mark held by a number of people (in different classes or jurisdictions) is more likely to be successful, although Facebook reserves the right to remove or reallocate a name for any reason.

The social networking site, Facebook, is changing the way it records user names.

Currently, a Facebook member’s profile has a URL like www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=123456789.

Facebook has announced that from 12.01am US EDT (2.01pm Australian EST) on Saturday 13 June it will allow members to choose a username on a first-come, first-serve basis, so their URL would be in the form www.facebook.com/blaise.dipersia

There is a risk that people will seek to register third-party trade marks as Facebook usernames. Facebook is allowing trade mark owners to block registration of a username that is the same as their registered trade mark. Phillips Ormonde Fitzpatrick strongly recommends trade mark owners consider how they will act as soon as possible (before Saturday).

To register your trade mark with Facebook and block the registration of that trade mark as a username, complete the form here. You will require the registered number of your trade mark. You can only enter a single trade mark per submission.