Following the UDRP ‘s new gTLD program, new Rights Protection Review Mechanisms (RPM) have been implemented to protect trademark holders, such as the Uniform Rapid Suspension System (URS) procedure.
ICANN has now decided to address changes suggested by trademark holders and intellectual property experts regarding the UDRP. For instance, one of these suggestions is that a domain name should be considered abusive if it is registered OR if it is used in bad faith, instead of requiring that both these conditions are met. The idea is to lighten the burden of proof on the rights owner to take into account a more up-to-date reality. Another suggestion is to provide for an accelerated procedure in case of abusive conduct and to get a decision more rapidly if the defendant fails to respond to the complaint.
It has also been proposed to provide for a presumption of bad faith if the registrant has lost three UDRP complaints and to require any repeat offender to pay a response fee to defend the case. The central issue at this stage of the study is to understand the extent to which the UDRP principles should be changed in favour of trademark owners, while knowingt hat it may weaken the UDRP principles.
Sources:
Overview: The Rights Protection Mechanisms (RPM) Review https://newgtlds.icann.org/en/reviews/cct/rpm
Phase: 1 Initial Report of the Review of All Rights Protection Mechanisms in All gTLDs Policy Development Process :
https://www.icann.org/public-comments/rpm-initial-report-2020-03-18-en