The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ("ICANN") is seeking to identify one or more suppliers qualified to develop and conduct survey(s) to assess the use and effectiveness of Sunrise and Trademark Claims Rights Protection Mechanisms (RPMs). These RPMs are services provided through ICANN's Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH) for trademark owners.
RPMs refer to those policies and processes developed to provide workable mechanisms for trademark owners to either prevent or remedy certain unauthorized use of their trademarks in the domain name system. The Sunrise service provides priority access to rights holders to request domain names associated with their trademark(s). The Trademark Claims service provides notification to: (a) a potential domain name registrant attempting to register a domain name that matches a trademark record entered into the TMCH, and (b) a rights holder after registration of a matching domain name.
As Sunrise and Trademark Claims RPMs have not been subject to policy review to date, no comprehensive, publicly available data currently exists that measures their effectiveness. By surveying the specific respondent groups identified by the ICANN community as most affected by Sunrise and Trademark Claims RPMs, ICANN aims to assist the community to evaluate the efficacy of these RPMs, as well as bolster ICANN's data collection efforts related to the RPMs.
For a complete overview of the RFP including the timeline, please see here.
Indications of interest are to be received by emailing RPMs.Survey-rfp@icann.org. Proposals should be electronically submitted by 23:59 UTC on 09 March 2018 using ICANN's sourcing tool, access to which may be requested via the same email address above.