Unambiguous ownership

[Matthew Skala <mskala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca>]

Here's an idea which I plan to make the centerpiece of my proposal to the 
IAHC: an unambiguous ownership requirement for new iTLDs.

The idea is that every new iTLD would be required to define its rules for 
second-level domains in such a way that for every second-level domain 
under the new iTLD, there is a unique potential client who would be 
allowed to have that domain.  That way there could be no 
dispute among several people claiming the same name; there also would be 
fewer synchronization problems between registries sharing the iTLD and 
the trademark problems are considerably weakened as well.

Some examples of domains with unambiguous ownership are the proposed 
".num" based on telephone number (only the owner of that number may have 
that SLD), the proposed ".rtv" based on radio callsign (similar) and 
various suggestions I've seen on this list which would cross trademarks 
with an identification of the jurisdiction in which the trademark is 
valid.

If a registry wanted to create a domain without an unambiguous ownership 
requirement, in order to make it more marketable to people who might not 
want to prove ownership of a name, then the registry could register a 
second-level or a geographic domain and accept clients below that.