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17 Intellectual property

324 IN ECOM 1 we called for submissions on whether the laws which protect intellectual property needed to be reformed to cope with new forms of electronic communications and publishing.⁴⁵⁰ The Ministry of Commerce is the government agency best placed to be developing policy in this area. We therefore propose not to go into further detail on intellectual property issues in this report, but to refer to the work being undertaken by the Ministry of Commerce.⁴⁵¹

325 The issue of domain name registration and “cyber squatters”, who use trademarks as domain names without authorisation, has been examined in the Ministry’s Review of the Trademarks Act 1953. No changes to legislation were recommended in relation to domain name registration, as it was concluded that the courts are dealing adequately with the issues.⁴⁵²

326 The allocation of domain names raises wider issues of internet governance which are also being addressed by the Ministry of Commerce. The Ministry is supporting the initiatives of the Internet Society of New Zealand in its submissions to the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and the World Intellectual Property Organisation regarding the regulation of domain name registration, and the current “first in first served” approach taken in New Zealand.

327 Copyright raises a number of difficult issues within the electronic environment. The Ministry of Commerce intends to consider these issues in its strategic assessment of copyright law, completion of which is envisaged by June 2000. The submissions on ECom 1 queried how a number of problems would be approached, and we have provided the Ministry with a summary of these issues for consideration in the strategic assessment.