[At-Large] Meeting to discuss TMCH Implementation as well as possible changed to the TM protections
Alan Greenberg
alan.greenberg at mcgill.ca
Sat Nov 17 05:39:18 UTC 2012
Copy of a message sent to ALAC list
===================================
As you are aware, a meeting was held in Brussels
several weeks ago to discuss implementation
issues for the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH).
The meeting included representatives of the GNSO
Stakeholder Groups and Constituencies, but not
At-Large. On Thursday and Friday of this week, a
follow-on meeting was held in Los Angeles. In
addition to a discussion of many of the technical
issues related to the TMCH, a full day was spend
discussing a list of issues that had been
presented to ICANN by the GNSO Business and
Intellectual Property Constituencies
(http://www.icann.org/en/news/correspondence/ncsg-to-icann-01nov12-en.pdf).
This time At-Large was represented (unfortunately
only remotely as no travel funding was provided).
I had the honour of participating along with Evan.
The first day on the BC/IPC issues was both
interesting and productive. The intent was:
1. To fully understand what it was that the BC
and IPC were asking for. The original document
was not particularly clear, and in fact, the
BC/IPC have spent the weeks following Toronto fleshing out their ideas.
2. To understand whether these issues were in
fact just implementation (as the BC/IPC)
believed, or Policy, which should be addressed by
GNSO Policy processes. The issue has been much
discussed within ICANN, but the difference has
never been formally addressed before. Staff were
charged with starting to develop a methodology
for making such decisions in the future. Although
the work is still preliminary, it was used to
analyze the more controversial of the BC/IPC
proposals, and the outcome matched that of the
discussions within ALAC. They were all deemed to
be Policy and thus required GNSO action to
formally change the status quo (a relief to some
at the table, and troubling to others).
3. To brainstorm the issues raised by the BC/IPC
and see if any solutions could be found to
address the issues that concerned them which at
the same time might be acceptable to the other
stakeholders. After a rather harrowing day (12
solid hours, followed by another 2 hours on
Friday) the result was a strawman proposal. The
proposal completely pleased none of the people
involved, which some people say is a good measure
of a reasonable compromise. Regardless, it is a
good start for more traditional community-based
discussions which now have to happen.
ALAC's first position was that we would prefer to
not have new policy changes in the new TLD
program at this late date. However we also did
look at the individual issues as discussed in a
message I sent earlier this week. The resultant
strawman proposal actually fits in moderately
well with the positions that ALAC took. Of
course, this is not yet a formal policy and there
are many details to be developed. This is perhaps
not surprising, as many of the ALAC positions to
protect innocent Internet users coincide well
with TM holders desire to prevent cyber-squatting
and fraud, and the over-reaching that some
attribute to TM holders (that is, wanting
protections far an above those granted by the TM
itself) were to some extent held in control.
I have to note that this type of focus group is
not an unknown way to try to bridge widely
disparate positions, but it is a very uncommon
one in ICANN, and one that some people have said
violates the bottom up multi-stakeholder model of
ICANN. It does bear some similarity to the STI
group which many herald as one of the more
effective ICANN policy efforts. It also re-opened
issues that the community (well, part of the
community including At-Large) had thought or
hoped were closed issues. Whether it was an
effective move or not history will tell. One of
the measures that I have is how quickly we can
convene a more formal ICANN process to refine and
actually approve a policy coming out of this proposal.
After Toronto, ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé had said
that he considers the TMCH to be a critical issue
and would personally oversee its implementation.
True to his word, he personally ran the 14 hours
of meetings. It was interesting!
I will elaborate (as perhaps will Evan) more in
the coming days on some of the high and low
points of the meeting, but this will have to do
for the moment. Today I was on the call for over
8 hours, and yesterday including a GNSO meeting
starting at 6 am and one other WG, I totaled 15
hours of teleconferences. So it is perhaps time
for a bit of rest and relaxation.
You can find the initial description of outcomes
of the meeting at
http://blog.icann.org/2012/11/trademark-clearinghouse-update/.
Alan
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