WIPO Internet Domain Name Process

Transcript - part 3: Budapest regional consultation

Hungarian Patent Office
October 22, 1998

(lunch)

(Mr. David Muls): There are two more topics on the agenda for the afternoon and I would suggest that we try to wrap up around 4 o'clock, maybe a little bit later, I understand that that would be desirable. The two issues that remain to be discussed are two of the more difficult issues. First of all, the question of the protection of famous and well-known marks. And second, the question of the addition of new generic top-level domains.

On the first issue of famous and well-known marks, I think the following summarizes the core of the debate. Realising that a concept of famous and well-known marks, a uniform concept at the international level, does not exist, famous trade-mark holders nonetheless find that they are particular victims of certain cybersquatting activities on the Internet particularly with regard to famous marks. And at least some of the owners of famous trademarks would like to see adopted special protection measures for such famous marks. The approach that has been discussed over the last two years has taken the form of the so-called exclusion. The basic idea would be the following. A string, that is to say, a series of letters which corresponds to a famous mark after having been granted that status through some process would be excluded from being registered as a domain name by anybody other than the owner of the famous mark. This is a rather controversial concept and we would like to see whether there are any views in the audience. And particularly if there are trademark people in the group, I would like to hear how they view this considering that a concept of an internationally famous trademark concept does not exist as yet. Do you believe it would be a good idea to install such special protection measures for famous marks? Or do you believe that famous marks should not have this additional protection but should benefit from the other standard measures that may be put in place to prevent and resolve disputes? Should there be any special protection for famous marks? Are there any views on this? Who believes it would be necessary to have special protection for famous marks? There is a gentleman at the end of the room.

(Mr....................): We have to have special protection of famous marks. But I think it’s a bigger problem for the well-known marks, because as you know and you said before, we have had several meetings of the committee of Experts on trademarks to solve this problem to define what are well-known marks. I think for the famous marks it will be easier, everybody knows Coca-Cola and McDonalds or such trademarks which are so-called "famous." Also I raise the question whether the registrants of the domain names have to know which trademark is famous or well-known. Are they capable of knowing without any information from the trademark officer in the National Property Protection Office? I think they need help, they need counsel from the trademark offices before registration, they need information whether a domain name is trademark or whether this domain name infringes a well-known mark right or the famous mark right. Thank you.

(Mr. David Muls): If I can follow-up on this intervention, one approach to the problem would be, I think it is probably fair to say, that the majority of the persons in the debate would agree that it would be preferable that it is not the registry or the registrar for that matter who decides what should be a famous mark. That obviously would be a problem and the way this has been approached in the discussions is to say that some institution, some entity would establish a list of famous marks and then at the time of registration of the domain name there would be a cross-check against that list and if the domain name is on that list it would be bounced back. The question remains what are the criteria to be on that list? A highly difficult question.

(Mr..................): You know that at the first meeting of the Committee of Experts we didn't agree to have a list of famous marks. It is very difficult to have this list, because the majority of the countries did not agree with such a solution. Also, the majority of countries didn't agree to define what is a famous mark. Because as we know the Paris Convention and the TRIPS Agreement have differences, because the Paris Convention gives the right only on the trademark for goods but not for services, and the TRIPS Agreement gives the right to trademarks and to service marks. And I think also this problem is difficult because without any definition the only institution which is in a position to solve this problem is the Trademark Office or the court. But this procedure is very long, three or five years, and I think it is better for the registrant to have an opinion or justification from the Office.

(Mr. David Muls): Any other views?

(Mr...................): I think there will be another meeting concerning well-known marks because by simply registering anybody can access this mark, this brand. This is a question for me, is it then a well-known mark? It is used in all countries through the Net.

(Mr. Donald Heath): I would just like to ask a question. Rather than have well-known marks, famous marks defined by some criteria and if you meet that criteria you qualify as a well-known or famous mark, could it be for purposes of domain name registrations that to remove some subjectivity associated with what may be well-known or famous that the person submitting the petition may have some criteria by which he could or she could justify that their mark needs to be defined pre-emptually. Would that be reasonable to ask, or to have something like that in your opinion? Or would it be better to define in advance a priori the definition of a famous mark.

(Mr.................): Personally I agree with you, but the majority of the states didn't agree with this solution. Even in the field of trademarks, now we have one more problem in the field of the conflict between trademarks and Internet domain names. You know we have our own problems to define what is a well-known mark and how to protect a well-known mark. Probably in the U.S. you can protect very well, although I am not sure that anywhere in the world it’s a clear question. What is well-known in the U.S. or Hungary is not well-known in Macedonia or in Bulgaria or in the other countries. And I agree with you that we have to have such an institution or such a list, but we have to know how to solve this problem without this list or without this institution which is authorized to say that this is a well-known or this is a famous mark. Thank you.

(Mr.....................): In the U.S., we have a hundred and fifty million lawyers that are ready and willing to sue anybody and everybody.

(Mr. Geert Glas): I agree with you, I think that while I am of the opinion that yes we should give extra protection to famous trademarks, I am afraid that if we have to wait until the world agrees on that list we both would be retired by that point.

(Mr. David Muls): Another issue which is associated with that list is at the San Francisco regional consultation the representative of Porsche showed us a list in his statement of about 200 variations on Porsche which he deemed to be instances of cybersquatting or bad faith registrations of the domain name. So, one question that comes up is if you were to be willing to establish the list, you can't obviously foresee all the permutations that a person may wish to register of a particular trademark. So, without expressing any views as to whether this would be desirable or not, but even if it is desirable and it is implemented, it would certainly not solve all problems because the majority of instances would be variations on a certain name. Arguably such a list may serve some sort of evidentiary purpose, in the sense that if you are on the list it makes it easier for you to prove that a slight variation on the name is actually an infringement of your trademark, but, it would not necessarily solve all problems. May I ask in the audience, can I have a showing of hands on this particular question. How many people would be in favor of a list and how many people would think it’s not a particularly useful approach. How many people would be in favor? And how many people would be against the list? Most people seem to be against the list.

Maybe we can turn to the last question then. This is the addition of new generic top-level domains. As has been touched upon by Don Heath, the reasons why new generic top-level domains are to be introduced cannot only be considered in the context of intellectual property alone. There are many, many other considerations that come into play, technical considerations of what would be good for the Internet in terms of its development and also commercial considerations, competition considerations because currently the most well-used gTLD is in the hands of one particular corporation so it is difficult to definitively answer that question from a point of view of intellectual property alone. But if you think about it from an intellectual property point of view, what is your opinion? Do you believe that it would be at this stage a good idea to introduce new gTLDs or do you think that it would be better to keep the actual situation stable and maybe to introduce some of them very slowly to see what the effects are? Or do you believe that the reverse position should be taken and we should introduce a whole series of them, potentially hundreds in one go, so that the whole problem gets diluted because there will be so many different gTLDs that by itself the problem dispose of itself.

(Mr. Don Heath): I would like to add to that. Think about the following, how many people in this room who may be trademark or intellectual property attorneys, how many people would also like to have no more countries broken up because it exacerbates the trademark problem. It is the same thing as having new gTLDs, once Yugoslavia gets broken up into five countries instead of having one country to worry about intellectual property rights you have five. Well, the domain name system is very much the same. You can't prevent the breaking up of countries and you also probably can't in the end break up the demand for gTLDs. I am not for that or against that, I don't care either way, but there may be an inevitability here, just because people demand vanity plates or vanity names as opposed to numbers.

(Mr. David Muls): Any views? Maybe the gentleman from the registry would give us some feedback on this question.

(Mr.....................): But this is not a real technical question. I think that some problems might be solved this way, but we would generate some others. So, I don't know whether it is worthwhile to go in this direction. Of course we spoke about the problem that there is only one possible name let’s say under .com, and some people might have the same name property in different fields of trademarks. It is not unusual to have same trademarks, as you said Porsche, the car company and some library or other company. So, if we make some sort of fields with different classifications then we may solve this problem. One company can go to the one classification in the one class and this other company can go to the other class and they won’t interfere. But of course when we speak about some famous names, I am sure they want to be in every class, so we might get some other problems in this way. I can't vote for one or the other really.

(Mr. Donald Heath ?): I just want to say that you summed up exactly what over two or so years most people have discussed and come to that same conclusion. That on the one hand you alleviate the access problem by allowing more possibilities, but you exacerbate the policing or the enforcement of your IP, so it’s a balancing act.

(Mr.......................): You will have to force people to these classes to these new domains. You don't police that and the problem remains. But there is this policing issue which is a very heavy issue, I would say, that's to come up.

(Mr.......................): I would like to ask you, can you tell us the structure of the users? For example, I think most of the users are classified in .com. But I am not sure that in .org, or .net we have many users.

(Mr. Donald Heath ?): I can give a rough guess at some of that. I think the number one domain is .com and I think the number two may be .US amazingly and then perhaps its .JP or .UK, its bizarre the way it goes after that. But of the six or seven top-level domains I think four of them are country codes.

(Mr...............): That means that you have to think about establishing new general domain names to divide.com up to be easier for users. Do you agree with this solution?

(Mr. Donald Heath?): I prefer not to say. I could predict the future, I think the day is coming when there would be many, many top-level domains beyond country codes. But the real issue is should it be now or should we find a way to solve some of the underlying problems before they are created and that is my question on that?

(Mr....................): Why don't you use this country code ISO3166 standard? I think if you always use that from my point of view, it will solve the problems. Not all, but most of them.

(Mr. Donald Heath ?): I think you would have never produced a generic top-level domain stuck with geography country codes ISO3166. But now, as they say, the cat is out of the bag and people want these. Even the country code top-level domains are suddenly starting to look like generic top-level domains, like Tuvalu.TV, and .TO. Even .US could be Toys-R.US.

(Mr. David Muls): One of the things that had been mentioned, particularly at the Brussels consultation was, if new gTLDs are to be introduced there should be a very clear differentiation between the categories. This is basically also what you are suggesting. Let us try to see how that could be done practically speaking. For instance, there is now already an attempt at least to differentiate in the gTLDs between the .com, the .org and the .net, but arguably those are still too close to each other in terms of their meaning or their association as to the type of business or entity that they denote, that it is difficult to make the distinction. For instance, a company may very well be in .com but also in the .net, what is really the difference between the two. So, one of the ideas that was mentioned in Brussels was if we introduce new gTLDs they should be very clearly differentiated. For instance triple X for sexually explicit material, that would be clearly differentiated from maybe a .com. That would be one possibility but one may wonder whether that would really satisfy the demand, because probably the demand is more in the commercial area and that is where the tension really may exist. If you introduce next to the .com the .bus for instance that probably is not sufficiently differentiated to avoid confusion at that level. So are there any thoughts about the possibility of introducing new generic top-level domains that are very clearly differentiated and whether that would solve any problems?

(Mr. Geert Glas): I think there are a couple of easy ones. I think .xxx or some people even say .sex is an obvious one. And I think honestly it would save us from a lot of problems, because a lot of problems that we are encountering today, a lot of people who are against top-level domains, against this whole thing are against it because of abuse in that area. The International Ad Hoc Committee, you may recall, at one point proposed to have seven additional generic top-level domains. One was .nom which was meant for individuals, persons as against companies, I think that is a very obvious one too. It is also one that would indeed alleviate a number of problems because Mr. Dupont, a name very familiar in my country would not be able to get Dupont.com and thereby prevent the multinational Dupont from doing that. It is not because your name is Magiar that you would go out and have Magiar.com. If you want to have your own domain name for your own little web site that is fine, but put it in .nom. There was a request made at one point by IATA, and IATA stands for International Air and Transport Authority, to have .Air. And IATA actually proposed that they would act as a registry for the .Air domain and they said we already have our own system in place. Because if you take a plane your luggage will have the name of the airport it is sent to. And everybody knows in the world that if it says ORD, it means Ohair Airport in Chicago and they have their own kind of top-level domain name system already in place. I mean .Air is a very clear one, because there too not everybody can just say I am an airline company. You need to be registered as an authority. Those for me are easy. However, the main question or the underlying question is, once you put those in place, what does that mean? Does that mean that you can actually force individuals or that you can tell an individual sorry .com is not for you we require you to go to .nom. Or somebody who has a sexually explicit site, can you force that person to go there? In a lot of cases you won’t know and you will see at one point or just stumble across the fact that somebody is using a .com for a sexually explicit site. Can you at that moment force that person to change the web site, the in domain name to .xxx? For me that is the important underlying question, because as long as there are no rules and there is just a gentle request for people to follow guidelines, we may in the end have companies who have famous trademarks who will still decide for defensive reasons to file a registration in any and all of the top-level domains. And if the issue is we want to create more oxygen, more space in this system, then we fail terribly if in the end it does not create any more space.

(Mr..................): But why do you create new generic top-level domain names if you don't use them? If nobody respect this you mislead the public or the other users. In the field of trademarks you know what has happened.

(Mr. David Muls): I don't know whether it also would be interesting to hear what the arguments are for new top-level domains apart from the obvious fact that it would add more competition to the registration business.

(Mr. Donald Heath): I can say that quite truthfully two or three years ago in fact, the motivation to create a top-level domains was simply to break the monopoly and to increase the number of registries and have competition. And after we got into it, we were awakened to this fact that there were these things called trademarks and infringement possibilities. It wasn't even part of the initial thinking and really it was with the initial entrance of INTA into the Process that we became aware of it, that was two years ago. But at the same time, going through that Process we learnt very quickly that there was a demand by ordinary people out there. Forget intellectual property for a minute, people wanted to have a rich variety of top-level domains. You know there was sort of a cache with .com, and the idea of having other top-level domains like .sport or .law or the like, that you could more clearly identify industry or fields of interest and the chance to give people a nice name close to a top-level domain was clamored for. I don't know if that still exists today. But the ability to have nice names at the second level is going away because there are five thousand, ten thousand people or more registering a day and you get a little constrained in that space. Unless, you want a name like J6105.star dollar sign or something like that. You want a name that makes sense. Then the argument can come up, well you can have second level domains and put something under that, so that the second level domain essentially replaces this hieroglyphic of a top-level domain. So, instead of having .law you could have law.com and have Jones data law.com for example. But then the problem with that is the big firms, such as the law firms want to have the cache of their own domain name and not fit under the other run of the mill law firms. So, it was demand and how do you assess real demand to justify creating top-level domains, that is the question. It was anecdotal before, the community, which was very small believe it or not even three years ago, said yes of course we want more top-level domain names. And as soon as it was proposed the big firms around the world, Ericssons, Phillips MB, AT&T, IBM, McDonalds, all the people with large trademarks to protect and with powerful pocket books and lobbying efforts, said wait a minute, let’s look at what this is going to mean to us. We may spend millions and millions in dollars trying to protect if there are more domains to protect. So, this whole issue has been sort of pushed back to the legal aspects of it and today I don't think anyone knows if there is a need other than competition. Well, there are other ways to do competition. And I better say again at this point that we are talking about competition at the registrar level, that is the entity who registers domain names from the user. The registry will remain a monopoly. You may have ten monopolies, different NSIs if you like or different .com, .net or .org. Another registry might have .firm, .law, .store or something. But it will be a monopoly that won’t be the only registry for those top-level domains. They may have multiple registrars under them that share that database and those registrars may also share the .com, .net, .org database. They may be registering under two registries. So, you still have a monopoly and therefore the competition is only at one level, not at the registry level. So, the complexity of this thing just goes on and on. There is no answer, that is the point.

(Mr. Ken Fockler): A couple of other views on it. Maybe I even have to go back and try and answer a little bit your first question about the country codes. Why people just don't always use the country codes? And as Don said, if it had been a perfect world to start with it might have helped to solve a lot problems. Some of those country codes though were not well organized, and are still not necessarily well organized and are very expensive compared with getting a .com. I know for instance the Canadian one, the .CA which is quite well organized and run by a volunteer group of academic people mostly, followed the early strict procedures so that if you wanted a domain name and you were from the Province of Ontario you had to have a .ON in the name. It was just kind of restrictive, slow and bureaucratic so most Canadians just went and got a .com. Many companies also thought it’s now a global economic environment and they don't necessarily need to be identified with any one particular region. I am in the global market place and having a top-level domain kind of appealed in that sense. So, that is another little bit of background, I think, as to why people were going to top-level domains and finding them fast and easy and convenient and pretty slick and inexpensive compared with some of the others. Also, Don has given many of the other reasons. I think one of the things that I have been observing and getting involved with a little bit of consulting work with my government and some other interested parties, is the concept of what is it we are trying to accomplish and how do we get there? And out of that discussion comes the fact we may want a couple of new top-level domains to accomplish new procedures, new guidelines and maybe even new jurisdictions. Maybe if there is a registry for .firm that is in Europe and you know the jurisdiction that it is under and it may have some appeal. It may start to show the way. So, it is a question of whether logically I don't need a lot of new top-level domains but to get to where I want to go with a new, better system and few jurisdictions around the world and it might be a competitive situation. If .biz run in Canada is more attractive than .firm run in Europe versus .com run in the U.S. versus .shop run in Australia or something. Those could be market driven reasons to have some and maybe not just one at a time because you don't learn a lot from one at a time, but two or three with some pretty good rules and procedures probably fairly similar but they may have some jurisdictional differences or some basis which may help us lead our way into the right system for the future. Those are just a few thoughts on reasons for a few top-level domains, especially the jurisdiction.

(Mr. David Muls): Any comments on that? Maybe a last final point with regard to the introduction of new gTLDs, a great concern for trademark holders is that when the shop is opened for the new gTLD that there will be a rush to get certain names. And first of all should that be a concern? Second of all, if that is a concern how do you deal with that? I am sure that you understand what the problem is, it is much more difficult to think about what the solution would be. But this is certainly also something that needs to be considered in this context and this then ties in with the former point about the famous trademarks. Would it be desirable prior to launching one or more new gTLDs, to have a list with names that would be excluded from registration, because they would obviously be the first targets for speculation. Do you think that would be a good idea? Is that a realistic approach? This is one of the most difficult questions and that one I fully understand if people have difficulty in giving their thoughts.

(Mr. András Szász): Thank you very much. András Szász, Hungarian Patent Office. So, let me tell you that under the WIPO Committee in '95 there was a similar idea to create an informative list of well-known or famous trademarks. So, then this idea was rejected or minimally opposed by some countries. So, I think the next year’s Committee's work showed that at first guidelines or harmonization should be taken in this respect avoiding an overwhelming rush for that list or to avoid problems of different jurisdictions. Let me tell you that some of the countries said that a well-known trademark is a mark registered in our country, okay this is an exception but it does exist. So, I think something parallel can be done in this field. But I think the problems of well-known trademarks have to be solved at first at the trademark lower level and then it can be transferred to the area of domain names. Thank you very much.

(Mr. Ken Fockler): Do we wait? Does the domain name system wait for the well-known marks to get organized or do we say get your act together because the Internet is continuing to move forward and you better solve it or suggest something because new things are happening.

(Mr. András Szász): Well, I don't think we have to wait. I think only that speaking about well-known trademarks it has to be discussed or it has to be identified. Otherwise I think the fast growing system of domain names can be disturbed by persons, individuals or firms attacking domain names saying I have a trademark here, but this is very well known in my country so I claim an overall protection in the field of domain names. I think it is not so simple. Thank you.

(Mr. Ken Fockler): Thank you. I appreciate that and now that we are getting to know each other, I am not a trademark person but I am at these hearings and talking with my cohorts and others, getting the feeling that this phenomenon called the Internet has become a real wake up call to many industries and organizations, but especially you people or this group. Is that correct that is not a misunderstatement? As somebody here said, problems have been going on for quite sometime, more reason to get on with them I guess.

(Mr. ...................): I would like to add that if there was such a list it could be easily adopted to the registration system so it could be accessed through the Internet to ask whether this character string is allowed or not? I think the problem is who should be on the list? One proposal, let;s say a well-known name which is registered in ten countries let’s say and WIPO is able to say that this is a well-known name and then it could be put on the list. So, we can define a simple criteria that someone has to fulfill to be on the list and when someone knows what are the requirements to be put on the list he can fulfill them.

(Mr. David Muls): I would like to maybe just follow-up on that, is it true that from a technical point of view this is not a particularly difficult issue? Once you have the list you can maybe match the application to the list. The great difficulty is who gets on the list. And I think one would have to put one’s self a little more in the mind of an owner of a mark that sometimes is worth millions of dollars. I will give you an example, in the United States there is a company I won't mention the name, but there is a company X that probably thinks that it would be entitled to be on that list because it is particularly well-known in the United States. But that company is not that well-known anywhere else. But if you were to say to that company, you are not going to be on the list, I think that would be very difficult for that company to swallow and it is a very, very touchy matter. While technically it is a trivial problem in some respects, from a legal point of view it is a quagmire. But, I do think that there is a lot of value in what Ken said is that it would be desirable for lawyers and the trademark community, it’s a question of speed essentially to be able to follow the activities and the development of the Internet at closer pace. And in that spirit I would ask the gentleman who talked about the Committee at WIPO, I know that in '95 there was this proposal for the list and that it did not obtain approval, but between '95 and now many, many things have happened and the situation has changed fundamentally. Do you believe that now the people would be more sensitive to the need for such a list or do you believe that even at this date there would still be resistance to going in that direction?

(Mr.................): Thank you very much. (end of tape). I think well-known trademarks or famous trademarks per definition, are not a special type of trademark but deserve a special type of extended protection. And as far as I know TRIPS Article 16 para 2 is in this respect, or the Paris Union Convention Article 6 bis also shows an approach defining the borders of this extended protection. But I think this extended protection, I am sorry maybe I am too much trademark minded, so I think this is against third parties and it isn't a global view actually. I think this work in the Standing Committee of WIPO has the purpose of channelling the different views concerning this. But, I think we can't wait for this, I think we have to look at different ideas concerning ways to avoid unpleasant problems. Frankly speaking, I think no quantative approach can be just in this field. So, I think in a very closed economy, an absolutely non-market economy, a company of bad quality goods having no competition at all can say, okay I have a very well-known trademark in my country so I claim to attack others' domain names. I think it’s a probable danger of a simple list approach. Thank you very much.

(Mr. Geert Glas): I think it’s the fact that the trademark community has not gotten its act together as you say and has not arrived at the stage of compiling a list of famous trademarks. It is not a coincidence now because these people are too lazy or because the Geneva hotels are too bad and people want to go home. It’s just because it is an almost impossible task. And to make matters worse you cannot quantify it. I think at some point in the International Ad Hoc Committee we had discussions as to what would constitute a famous trademark, and then it became an internationally known trademark. And I think in order to make the discussion easy people wanted to quantify it. People said well, maybe you have an internationally known trademark when you have 25 or 50 trademark registrations, or trademark registrations in 50 countries. Now, as lawyer you tend to be raised in a system whereby you criticize and so it is easy to criticize. But still, that is not a very good solution, because we all can imagine trademarks that have been registered in 50 countries but which clearly are not famous trademarks. And we probably know trademarks which are maybe only registered in one country or two and which are very famous. I think Harrods is a quite famous London store. I think the Ritz is a famous Paris Hotel. The Crazy Horse Saloon or the Moulin Rouge are famous French cultural institutions. Clearly, those people have not filed for trademark protection in a lot of countries. Worse than that, had they done so those trademarks would probably have become void because of non-use. But still, you can make a case in saying that those trademarks should be on the list because they are famous. So, to quantify it does not help it at all and I am quite pessimistic as to the outcome of this discussion and as to whether it is reasonable to think that we could in the short-term get to such lists. And I don't even want to think of the U.S. attorneys suing whoever makes up that list because their client would not be on there.

(Mr................): I am from a patent office, Holland. I think that there is a mistake in the definition as to well-known marks and famous marks. Because I think that what are famous marks are the marks which are very well known in the world. But well-known marks are in our territory. And in our literature it was defined that the well-known marks are the marks known by 50% of the clients which use the products and the services. Thank you.

(Mr. András Szász): For me it is a question whether technically it is possible to introduce global rights on domain names which are in respect of territorial rights of trademarks? So, I think maybe it is not possible to do it.

(Mr. David Muls): One thought on this is that even if the rest would not exist apart from the particular problem of the possibility of speculating at the introduction of a new gTLD. There would still be remedies available to the owners of the famous marks through either the court system or any ADR procedure. It would not be that they are totally devoid of any mechanism to rectify any infringement or to cause any infringements. Are there any more comments?

Well, thank you very much, I think we can conclude. But before getting to that I would certainly on behalf of all the members of the Panel and myself and all the organizers thank you very deeply for your presence and participation. It was for us a great pleasure to be here and although it was a discreet audience I do think the opinions expressed were extremely valuable and it was a pleasure to be here with you and to try to thrash out some of these issues. Having said that I will pass the microphone to Mr. Ficsor. Thank you very much.

(Mr. Mihály Ficsor): Ladies and gentlemen I don't think that it will be appropriate or necessary or very much nice in your eyes and ears to try to sum up the discussions of this Seminar. I would like maybe to express thanks on behalf of this well-known and famous organization, W I P O, which may be pronounced also now as WIPO, so there is no conflict with this cleansing material anymore. I would like to thank first of all the Hungarian Patent Office for the truly excellent organization of this meeting. We use this expression "excellent organization" and "perfect arrangement" too frequently and in a way sometimes these do not have the real contents. But I think that these expressions have received their full definition during these three days. And of course I also thank the Patent Office for the warm hospitality extended to all of us, to the foreign participants. And my thanks on behalf of WIPO of course also go to the speakers, to this dream team actually. And in addition to expressing thanks I express also hopes, I hope that this Symposium has been useful for you, and useful for us, and for WIPO. Namely, that it may help these countries to consider the ratification or accession to the new treaties, the Internet treaties in the foreseeable future. To be informed about the opportunities offered by the WIPO Information Technology Projects and to see better the options concerning the possible conflicts between Internet domain names and trademarks. I wish you, to the foreigners a happy return to your respective countries and for the Hungarians a nice celebration of Revolution.1956.HU. Thank you.