Companies that register Internet sites on the .ie domain are not being afforded the proper protection in terms of intellectual property, a legal expert has claimed.
The IE Domain Registry (IEDR) has the sole responsibility for registering domain names on Ireland's national Internet domain, .ie.
The company, which recently broke away from University College, Dublin relies on internal procedures to deal with disputes when two or more companies vie for the same name for their websites.
Mr Niall Rooney, a lawyer with Tomkins, said the absence of a transparent appeals process outside the auspices of the IEDR meant companies did not receive proper intellectual property protection.
"It strikes me that the IEDR is tremendously concerned with obtaining new domain registrations and is not spending a lot of time looking after existing ones," he said.
"A glaring omission, in my view, is the complete absence of any mechanism for complaining on record and a transparent system for dealing with complaints regarding domain names," he said.
This criticism comes just days before a major conference on these issues at the World Intellectual Property Organisation's headquarters in Geneva on Tuesday.
This conference is seeking a co-ordinated response from the 200-plus country domains to intellectual property issues brought about by an explosion of business activity on the Internet.
With the saturation of generic domains, such as .com, the less well-known country domains are becoming much more popular. However, having been concerned with the purely technical issues surrounding the Internet in each country, the local domains are finding it hard to cope with issues such as cyber squatting and brand protection.
The IEDR only grants domain names to companies that can prove they are registered and operating in Ireland. This registration process is considered unwieldy and more complicated than that of several other country's domains, where the initial process is straightforward and is backed up by independent boards of appeal.
In the Irish case, if a dispute breaks out between companies as to who has the right to a domain name, the IEDR makes a decision internally. In contrast, the regulators behind the .co.uk domain in Britain pass the matter on to an independent board set up to adjudicate on such matters.
"The IEDR tries to get it right first time and has in place a very intricate set of rules, which is an attempt to stop cyber squatters getting through the net," says Mr Rooney.
"That sets on them a very high burden to get it right first time. I'd like to see them start addressing that balance back towards dispute resolution, to give comfort to applicants."
Speaking to The Irish Times, Mr Mike Fagan, manager of the IEDR, acknowledged that appeals against rejected applications were dealt with by the domain management.
"Basically we refer the matter to a company of patented lawyers as a first step before any litigation takes place. However, these are stopgap measures and we intend setting up both a policy advisory committee and an independent dispute mechanism over the next few months," he said.
However, the IEDR, as a private limited company, would not be bound by recommendations from the proposed advisory committee but would listen carefully to what it had to say, he added.
