I am interested in Trademark and intellectual Property issues and the
conduct of the Generic Auctions taking place.

Has anyone, as an eligible bidder in any of the auctions, received any
notice from auDA (or Stuff Auctions) advising that they have been made aware
of either Trademark or other Common Law Mark or other intellectual property
claims on names that may be similar or exactly match that of domains that
they are auctioning??

Has anyone been advised that successful bid in an auction where a party has
Trademark or Common Law Mark or other IP claim, is in fact no guarantee that
the domain may be used by the successful bidder and may be revoked or
overturned by auDA or a court of law??

Is the auDA, in your opinion, conducting itself appropriately under these
circumstances by hiding such information from potential bidders??

It is within my knowledge that they are conducting one or more auctions not
withstanding knowledge of third party interests in such Common Law Mark,
Trademark and other rights and this seems to have not given rise to
notification of such advice being issued to bidders. Why is auDA not passing
this, perhaps pertinent, information on to bidders??

This raises an interesting question as to whether you consider that auDA
should give notice of other interests to bidders especially with Common Law
or Trade Marks?

Such a situation then raises the prospect of interesting claims being made
under conflicting rights eg Trademarks vs domain licence rights and
therefore risking damages and costs for the successful bidder?

I am interested in industry perception of this very real situation and
welcome your feedback as to what levels of disclosure you as industry
participants would expect from the governing body purporting to "implement
consumer safeguards" and "facilitate .au Dispute Resolution Policy"
(presumably for a fee when it is eventually finalised and implemented ??)
and further claims to be "an Australian not-for-profit company vested with
the responsibility of operating the .au domain for the benefit of all
stakeholders."

Comments please - Are you happy with such non-disclosure?? How about the
outcomes??

Phil Wright