Web3 Domain Alliance launches to try to bring order to blockchain domains – Domain Name Wire

Group wants intellectual property rights for blockchain strings, and also to help protect brands in the domains.

A new advocacy group, the Web3 Domain Alliance, launched today, backed by Unstoppable Domains and a bunch of small players in the space.

The group has a couple of main goals. One is to prevent name collisions in blockchain domains, which Unstoppable has championed. The second is to create a way to protect the intellectual property rights of others in blockchain domains.

Here is the group’s pledge, on the website:

Adhering to the Web3 Domain Alliance’s principles of developing unique, interoperable blockchain domain namespaces, NFT domains, and advocating for legal protection and market acceptance of blockchain namespaces.

To protect users and strive for the development of interoperable NFT domain name systems by promoting the voluntary avoidance of namespace collisions with existing Web3 name systems in the Web3 domain industry.

Advocating the policy position that owner-operators of NFT domain registries create trademark rights in their web3 TLDs through first commercial use with market penetration.

To protect our intellectual property rights, including trademark rights, in our web3 TLDs.

To cooperate with other Web3 Domain Alliance members to promote the advancement of the Web3 Domain Alliance’s policy positions.

To work with other Web3 Domain Alliance members to advocate for the recognition of NFT domains by a broad community of stakeholders and the public.

The site reiterates its core argument about obtaining intellectual property in a separate message near the top of the site:

The Web3 Domain Alliance believes that blockchain-based generic web3 top-level domains (“TLDs”) developed and marketed by a specific organization are intellectual property rights, and that industry participants should respect the intellectual property rights of all blockchain naming services for the benefit of consumers as well as applications that wish to support blockchain -domain functionality.

Unstoppable Domains has argued that the first company to introduce and market a top-level domain name on the blockchain should get exclusive rights to it. It has also tried to obtain government trademarks for its top-level domains, largely without success. The US does not issue trademarks for TLDs. The reasoning boils down to this: when you see Amazon.com, you think of the brand Amazon, not the “brand” .com.

The company sued the creator of the .wallet name in Handshake and even shut down its own .coin extension when it found that another entity brought a .coin to market earlier.

The decentralized nature of blockchain technology will make it difficult to achieve this goal. Anyone can spin up a blockchain naming system at any time without the approval of a central authority. The traditional DNS system has ICANN, which assigns top-level domains and ensures the security and stability of the overall system.

And some of the competing blockchain naming systems are not run by a single company like Unstoppable Domains. So deciding not to create matching TLDs is not in the hands of a single person or entity.

Some blockchain domain supporters believe that matching TLDs is not a problem, given their use on different blockchains.

One of the group’s other core goals, protecting intellectual property rights in (second-level) blockchain domains, is probably necessary for these domains to gain wide adoption. Implementing such a system will prove challenging given the decentralized and sometimes anonymous nature of these domains.

Despite that challenge, adding this to the charter is a smart idea. It can help the group gain support from intellectual property interests that would not otherwise be interested in the group’s mission.