Singapore Withdraws Internet Domain Trademark Application

March 14th, 2003
By Dow Jones

Singapore's Internet registry on Friday withdrew its trademark application for the country suffix for the Internet domain name of ".sg", following a hostile public reaction to the unprecedented move.

Singapore applied to register its country-code top-level domain name - industry jargon for the two-letter ".sg" suffix - back in 1999, and if successful would have been the first country to have done so.

The Singapore Network Information Centre, or SGNIC, a part of government telecommunications regulator the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, said in a statement Friday it "would not be necessary to proceed" with the application any longer, in light of industry changes.

The SGNIC, which is the sole domain name registry for ".sg", filed in September 1999 an application to turn ".sg" into a trademark, which it said was to prevent third parties from registering a trademark or servicemark with that suffix.

"The Internet community has since changed," said SGNIC, adding that the Governmental Advisory Committee of the not-for-profit Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, has "put in place clearer policies governing the use of domain names."

ICANN is an international body that coordinates the technical management of the Internet globally.

"At the end of the day, it wasn't justifiable to proceed. The (reason) for filing for trademark protection no longer exists in today's context," said Lau Kok Keng, a partner at Rajah & Tann, a law firm.

"It is a good way for this to end. There was an adverse public reaction and SGNIC would have faced (the risk) of going (against) the opposition and not overcoming it," Lau said.