NZIPA

New Zealand Institute of Patent Attorneys Inc 

.NZ WHOIS SERVER POLICY REVIEW 

SUBMISSION

The New Zealand Institute of Patent Attorneys (“the Institute”) is an 
incorporated body representing most, though not all, of the New Zealand 
registered patent attorneys who are resident in New Zealand.  Patent 
attorneys specialize in intellectual property matters such as patents and trade 
marks and in recent years have become heavily involved in domain name 
management and disputes on behalf of clients.

The Institute made submissions on the initial WHOIS policy consultation 
paper, and fully endorses the draft policy available online at 
http://dnc.org.nz/content/whois_draft_1.pdf.

The only matter the Institute wishes to add relates to the naming of the 
registrant field in the Whois records.  This field should contain the full legal 
name of the Registrant.  However, this field is called "Registrant Contact 
Name".  This causes a great deal of confusion, as many people think that field 
is for the name of the contact person for the domain name, ie the name of the 
administrative contact, rather than the name of the Registrant.

Some Registrars include an extra field in their own systems for "Registrant" 
which can be different from the "Registrant Contact Name".  This adds to the 
confusion.

The Institute requests that the “Registrant Contact Name” field be renamed 
"Registrant" or similar to avoid such confusion.  It also requests that the word 
“Contact” be removed from all of the Registrant field names to avoid 
confusion.