The Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB) is preparing itself to, if necessary, take legal action against a Canada-based firm for the right to use the Internet domain name, jamaica.com.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. lost New Zealand case against US firm

"Our Marketing Committee is currently looking at all the options available to us, including legal ones, that we can use to acquire jamaica.com", Roy Miller, the deputy director of tourism who is temporarily running the JTB until a new director is appointed, told the Sunday Observer late last week.

Jamaica.com is currently owned by an entity known as Caribbean Online that essentially sells vacations to the Caribbean.
Its Website gives its name as col.com and informs visitors that its corporate head office is as 1295 Johnston Street, Vancouver, British Columbia. One James Fierro is named as the firm's founder/CEO/director.
"The col.com Corporation," the Website says, "is a privately-funded, start-up company incorporated in the state of Delaware. It is a vertically-integrated service company that has as its principal business the creation, communication, facilitation and management of travel research, planning, and booking for the Caribbean."

MORRISON. JTB not accusing Caribbean Online of cybersquatting

The company also describes itself as "an Internet marketer of tourism, travel and international business specific to the Caribbean" and says that its vision is to be recognised as an authority on the Caribbean region and to consistently provide the best online experience for choosing and booking Caribbean travel vacations.
The site features a range of Caribbean islands, including a Jamaica link that gives a history of the island and lists a few hotels as well as attractions.
Last week, the Sunday Observer was told that overtures have been made to Caribbean Online, including letters of request and visits by the JTB representative in Canada, but to no avail.

MILLER. JTB looking at all available options

The next step being planned by the JTB, therefore, is to appeal to the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), the United Nations body mandated to promote the protection of intellectual property worldwide, as the tourist board is convinced that it has a legal claim to the user name.
"We are very anxious to get jamaica.com because it is the most intuitive domain name we could use; more powerful than the current JTB Website at jamaicatravel.com," one JTB spokesperson said last week.
Online marketing has grown in popularity each year since the emergence of the information superhighway in the early 1990s and a significant amount of business is now being conducted via the Internet.
Last Thursday, Reuters news agency reported that online sales over the Christmas holiday period increased by 41 per cent over the same period last year.

It is that volume of business that the JTB intends to cash in on as part of its effort to stay afloat in the face of increasingly aggressive competition in an already discriminating market.
Despite the JTB's apparent confidence that it can win the case, the agency would, no doubt, have been staggered by the WIPO's December 20 ruling against Queen Elizabeth in an alleged cybersquatting case filed against an American firm that registered the domain name newzealand.com.
Three neutral arbitrators named by WIPO found that New Zealand had not registered the disputed name as a trademark and that the US firm, Virtual Countries Inc, had not "acted in bad faith" in registering the domain name.

New Zealand is a constitutional monarchy and Queen Elizabeth is its head of state. Therefore, the case was filed by "Her Majesty the Queen, in right of her government in New Zealand, as trustee for the citizens, organisations and state of New Zealand".
Virtual Countries Inc has placed a disclaimer on the site explaining that it is "not affiliated with any government entity associated with a name similar to the site domain name".
Last week, a local Website developer noted that "if the Queen's submission on behalf of New Zealand is any indication, Jamaica's chances may be slim".

However, JTB officials appear buoyed by New Zealand's successful bid at the WIPO last month for the rights to newzealand.biz. In that case, the registrant of the domain name, iSMER of London, did not furnish a defence to the complainant's charge, backed by evidence, that it had "acted in bad faith" in registering the domain name. iSMER agreed to the transfer of the name to the complainant.
According to WIPO, just under 2,000 domain name disputes were filed with it by the end of the year 2000. This, it said, represents "a mere fraction of the more than 33 million domain names in use on the Internet today".
However, WIPO admitted that the disputes result from the first-come first-serve policy of Internic, the original company selected to register domain names back in 1986 when the Internet was in its infancy. Then, the first person who selected a domain name received the name, no questions asked.

Technology analysts insist that the first-come first-serve policy would have worked if every company and country was Internet-savvy from the start.
"Unfortunately, many were not. A great many traditional companies were slow to recognise the significance of the Internet and the web as the information vehicle of the future. This left room for others to step in and act first," wrote Boston-based intellectual property law specialist, Brett Dorny in an article posted on CNN.com.
Registration of a domain name was easy and cheap. The registrant merely paid a US$70 fee and completed a form. As long as the domain name was not already taken, no other action was needed. The registrant did not even have to use the domain name or produce a Website.

The loose arrangement led to the emergence of cybersquatting, which is basically the registration of someone else's trademark or trade name as a domain name for the purpose of selling it to the appropriate holder.
According to Dorny, many companies, such as Wendy's and Volkswagen, have found that their trademarks, names and variations of their names have been registered as domain names by someone else eager to sell the brand name.
The practice continued unabated until 1998 when the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) took over responsibility for, among other things, the management of the generic top level domains such as .com, .net and .org.
ICANN, recognising the urgent need for a solution to the dispute resolution problem, concluded that the process of negotiating a new international treaty would be too slow, and new national laws would most likely be too diverse.

So ICANN approached WIPO to assist in solving the problem of resolving disputes. With the support of its member states, WIPO conducted extensive consultations with members of the Internet community around the world, after which it prepared and published a report containing recommendations dealing with domain name issues. Based on the report's recommendations, ICANN adopted the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP).
The UDRP went into effect on December 1, 1999 for all ICANN-accredited registrars of Internet domain names.
Essentially, the UDRP requires complainants to prove that:
(i) the domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which the complainant has rights;
ii) the respondent has no rights or legitimate interest in respect of the domain name; and
iii) the domain name has been registered in bad faith and is being used in bad faith.
Proof that a domain name was "registered in bad faith" may be established through evidence that the registration was done with the purpose of selling it to the appropriate holder of the name.

Yesterday, JTB chairman Dennis Morrison made it clear that the tourism promotions agency was not accusing Caribbean Online of cybersquatting.
"What we would like is to have the name," Morrison told the Sunday Observer as he confirmed that the agency was preparing to file its case at the WIPO.
On Friday, an Internet-savvy source told the Sunday Observer that "like Virtual Countries, holders of newzealand.com, Caribbean Online offers information on the country and goes even further to offer vacations to Jamaica... and unless Jamaica can prove that Caribbean Online registered jamaica.com in bad faith, perhaps by subsequently offering it for a price, then we may be headed in the same direction as the Queen".

In the meantime, however, Jamaica is covering its bases and has, explained the JTB's Miller, written to domain name registrar, Afilias, requesting the right to use jamaica.info, a new domain name.
Afilias, Miller said, is holding country names in trust.
He admitted, though, that .info would take some time to achieve the popularity of .com among Internet users.

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