[council] Regarding Agenda item 3

[Bruce Tonkin]

Hello Mawaki,

> 
> Maybe this is relevant only for those who were not in Wellington:
> could we have a couple of sentences as to why we're having 
> item 3 on the agenda? thanks, Mawaki
> 

Item 3 on the Agenda is a follow up to Item 4 of our Wellington meeting:
http://www.gnso.icann.org/meetings/agenda-29mar06.shtml.  This agenda
item was in response to a request for discussion from Lucy Nichols of
the IPC constituency.

More background material is available in the IPC constituency statement
on new gTLDs:
See Section 4(b) of:
http://www.gnso.icann.org/issues/new-gtlds/ipc-01feb06.pdf 

See also the webpage on "Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policies" at:
http://www.icann.org/udrp/

The most relevant one is the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution
Policy (UDRP) available at: http://www.icann.org/dndr/udrp/policy.htm 

As I understand it, the rationale for introducing the UDRP was that
there are established laws for dealing with trademarks within nations,
and that there are some treaties between nations around the topic of
trademarks (ie Paris Convention 
for the Protection of Industrial Property).   A complainant can go to
court to resolve a trademark dispute, but this process is considered to
be expensive and time-consuming.   The UDRP process was developed as an
administrative proceeding to deal with the bad faith registration and
use of trademarks as domain names.  A court of law can still overturn a
UDRP decision.

The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) which is an observer
to the GAC, produced a report called the WIPO-II report, see:
http://arbiter.wipo.int/processes/process2/report/html/report.html#4 

The mandate for the report was:

"On June 28, 2000, the Director General of WIPO received a request from
19 of WIPO's Member States to develop, through a consultative process,
recommendations on means of dealing with the "bad faith, abusive,
misleading or unfair use," within the Internet domain name system (DNS),
of identifiers that form the basis of certain naming systems used in the
real or non-virtual world.[1]  The identifiers specified were:

- personal names; 

- International Nonproprietary Names (INNs) for pharmaceutical
substances; 

- the names of international intergovernmental organizations; 

- geographical indications, geographical terms, or indications of
source; and 

- trade names. "


WIPO subsequently wrote to ICANN on 21 Feb 2003:
http://www.icann.org/correspondence/gurry-letter-to-cerf-lynn-21feb03.ht
m 
And requested that ICANN considered developing a dispute resolution
process to deal with protecting the names and acronyms of International
Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs) and country names (being one
particular type of geographical identifier).

WIPO subsequently sent a letter to ICANN on 15 Nov 2005:
http://www.icann.org/correspondence/gurry-to-cerf_twomey-15nov05.pdf 
This letter essentially asks why ICANN has not "implemented" the
recommendations from WIPO, supported by the GAC.

Now for ICANN to impose a dispute resolution mechanism that is binding
on existing registrars and  registries - would require a Consensus
Policy from the GNSO.

Note however that ICANN can still impose provisions on new gTLD registry
agreements.  An example of which were some requirements for .info around
country names.


So in summary, the reason it is on the agenda is to see if there would
be support for initiating a PDP to develop an administrative proceeding
to deal with disputes around the names and acronyms of International
Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs).

Note that the GNSO may well decide to delay work on such a PDP until
work is completed on the priority areas of new gTLDs, IDNs, and WHOIS.

However as a starting point, I think the whole Council at least needs a
briefing on this area, which is what I have asked for at the next
Council meeting.

Regards,
Bruce Tonkin