[Discussion-igo-rc] Summary of discussion on the GAC-GNSO Facilitated Dialogue on IGO Protections

[Bruce Tonkin]

Hello Brian,

Thanks for the quick response.

"Standing for IGOs which need not be expressly grounded in trademark law as such, as IGOs are created by governments under international law and are in an objectively different category of rights holders."

Actually that is what I think it would be useful to get elaborated.

Ie what legal mechanisms have Governments established to protect IGO names and abbreviations that are not grounded in trademark law.     

For example in Australia my understanding (as an engineer - I am not a lawyer) is that the relevant national laws would be consumer protection laws, and they may not single out IGOs for specific treatment, but could be invoked by the Australian Government to avoid consumers being misled by the mis-use of an IGO name or abbreviation.

>>  I would also like to take this occasion to mention a related outstanding item, namely the GAC Advice in the Hyderabad Communique that ICANN should establish "an emergency relief (e.g., 24-48 hours) domain name suspension mechanism to combat risk of imminent harm."

I guess the nearest analogy would be the establishment  of the URS process for new gTLD for prompt action against trademark infringement, that is based on the UDRP process..   I agree that some form of rapid action is desirable once the underlying dispute mechanism is developed.


>>  For clarity, this emergency relief mechanism is intended to be different both from the possibility of a tailored UDRP variant, and also a version of the URS;  rather, such a mechanism was understood to operate on a much more rapid basis such as the Abuse Point of Contact.

The abuse point of contact is of course available to IGO's today.   Generally though when taking prompt action against abuse there needs to be a clear breach of the applicable law.   So there is still benefit in being clear on the applicable law.

Regards,
Bruce Tonkin