[At-Large] Proposed ALAC statement on reserved names for the IOC and Red Cross

[Alan Greenberg]

At 04/03/2012 06:56 PM, you wrote:

>On 04/03/2012 23:51, Avri Doria wrote :
> > However, if the issue of protected names and 'Strings Ineligible 
> for Delegation' (the category created by BoardStaff for this round) 
> is ever opened up to discussion and to policy process at a later 
> time, then I beleive the special status given any name other than 
> "example", should be reviewed as part of that exercise.  For this 
> round, the issue of reserved names was discussed as part of the New 
> gTLD PDP and in my opinion any changes would require another PDP.
>
>There are times at ICANN where I feel I am living a continuous
>"ground-hog day".
>
>A considerable amount of time and hard work has been devoted to
>discussing the concept of a Global Protected Marks List (GPML). By
>"considerable", I mean tens of thousands of man-hours, through the IRT,
>but also the STI-WG, plus countless formal and informal meetings.
>Bottom line: it would be extremely unwise to extend TM rights to
>entities beyond the rights they have been granted by WIPO. ICANN should
>*not* be in the business of choosing what's protected and what's not.
>
>Hence my own personal reservations about the wisdom (or lack thereof) of
>having the section "Strings Ineligible for Delegation", because it
>re-opens a Pandora's box which I was glad to see behind us.
>
>Kind regards,
>
>Olivier

Without attempting to say what is right/wrong/good/bad, it might be 
important to remember that the various Red Cross strings and I think 
the IOC ones (but not quite sure about that) are not trademarks. 
Whether they would be handled by WIPO (or UDRP) procedures, I don't 
know, but they are a different sort of beast. The various Red Cross 
symbols are character strings (as it has been explained to me) are 
not actually "owned" by the International Red Cross Movement but are 
protected in accordance with treaties, by individual laws within 
virtually all countries. Moreover, unlike trademark violation, 
improper use of the symbols and strings are protected in most 
countries by criminal code statute, so improper use is actually a 
criminal offence.

Alan