[At-Large] Is there a Need for a PDP to resolve the IOC/RCRC Issue?

[Alan Greenberg]

Sala, I do not have the time to reply in detail to your long 
communique, but a few points may be appropriate:

- It is not the GNSO but the IOC/RC Drafting Team that has issued a 
consensus call.

- Regarding whether other IGOs (note IOC is not actaully an IGO, but 
close) will later qualify for additional protections. I will not try 
to guess at what the GAC may do at some later date, but so far they 
have not put other groups in the same pot, despite some of their 
members calling for such action. I call your attention to the 
briefing paper that the Board used (among other things) to make its 
original decision. Specifically, that there were not other 
organizations that seemed to qualify under both international treaty 
AND national laws. The paper which was redacted from the Board 
briefing materials was released a while ago. See 
www.icann.org/en/groups/board/documents/briefing-materials-unredacted-20jun11-en.pdf.

- Although the issue of IGOs is not new, even if the GNSO had acted 
on the 2007 proposal to create a new (or modify an existing) dispute 
resolution mechanism, we would likely still be in the same boat today 
with regard to protecting names at the 2nd (or 1st) level. The 
dispute mechanism, if it existed, would allow IGOs to fight 
registrations that potentially conflicted (such as  typo-squatting or 
used the name in conjunction with other words). So that would have 
protected the names after the fact as the UDRP does for 
trademarks.ANd even if we now give protection against registering 
exact strings of IGO names, there would still be a need for an 
IGO-friendly dispute resolution mechanism.

Alan