[NA-Discuss] Issues Report on Dispute Handling for IGO Names and Abbreviations

[Nick Ashton-Hart]

See below:

On 16 Jun 2007, at 23:15, Danny Younger wrote:

>
> One of the issues that we are facing is that IGOs are
> seeking often unwarranted "protection" for their
> acronyms (usually valuable 3 and 4 letter strings in
> all of the official UN languages) at the expense of
> registration opportunities for others.  Further, it
> appears that they also seek a dispute resolution
> process that will deny others the opportunity for
> judicial appeal or review (as IGOs specifically seek
> to safeguard the own immunity from national
> jurisdiction).
>

A couple of points here:

1) IGOs are by treaty protected from action in national courts.  
Whether or not you think that's right, that is the current state of  
international law.

2) Per the USG for Legal Affairs' letter to ICANN, they do understand  
that disputes about domain names involving IGO names can be subject  
to a review that is not based upon court action in national courts.

> The vast bulk of registrations that potentially
> conflict with IGO acronyms are registered by North
> American interests that have managed to secure a good
> number of 3, 4, or 5 letter strings.  While the issue
> indeed is global, should the IGOs succeed in obtaining
> enhanced protections there is a strong risk that North
> American interests will be the ones most impacted by
> such a development.

The protection that they have stated that they seek is that  
protection which they see as congruent with international law and the  
PCT Article 6ter.