Thursday - July 16 - 2009

   Background

With the expected introduction by ICANN of New generic top-level domains (New gTLDs) into the market place in 2010, ICANN had announced it is hosting a series of live events and webinars starting June 2009. These events are designed in a wide range of formats to address different levels of knowledge.

The purpose of these events, according to ICANN, is to explain the Program, share the progress that ICANN has made to-date and to receive feedback from the community that will facilitate shaping the program.

These events are geared towards businesses small and large, trademark experts, professional associations, consumer and other civil society groups, members of the domain name industry, government officials, potential applicants and the ICANN community. All events are free of charge, but pre-registration is required.

During the consultation sessions in New York (13 July) and London (15 July), attendees had the chance to hear from ICANN staff and others who have contributed to the ongoing process, including members of the Implementation Recommendation Team (IRT) that submitted their report to the ICANN Board on measures to protect intellectual property.

The proposed events in Hong Kong (24 July) and Abu-Dhabi (4 August) will mainly focus on the New gTLDs and Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) programs details. It is worth noting that the main language of the Abu Dhabi and Hong Kong events will remain English. for more info go to http://icann.org/en/topics/new-gtld-program.htm 

Participant's apprehension during New York and London, and MINC Chairman and CEO Khaled Fattal's grave concerns on IDNs and his recommendations to ICANN board and staff.

During the New York and London events serious issues were raised by many regarding the IRT proposals. MINC chairman and CEO Khaled Fattal who attended the London event praised the sincere effort of the IRT team and its panelists who presented in the New York and London events but raised serious concerns that IDNs vis a vis Intellectual Property and Trademark issues were hardly factored in.

  

          Kurt Pritz.   ICANN                                                          IRT Panelists.

       Fattal also raised concerns as to why the ICANN board did not act more diligently to ensure that comprehensive IDN expertise is on the IRT panelist to complement and cross check the western  as well as the US centric positions of Intellectual Property  and Trademarks. Had this been done prior to the road show it would have made the IRT recommendations more congruent with IDNs reducing many of the feared shortcomings addressed like enforceability and fair due process which the IDN regions and its users  will have to abide by them.

MINC Chairman Fattal later added that the IRT recommendations to the ICANN board are not only incomplete but potentially harmful to IDN gTLDs and to the IDN regions and to their prospective IDN users if unmodified

In fairness, many IRT members and panelists had agreed with Chairman Fattal. IRT panelist Ellen Shankman formally acknowledged that IDNs were not factored in at any significant level and had expressed her wish for this to have happened before the recommendations were completed and submitted to the ICANN board to debate them and consider approving them in their current form.

Fattal concluded by making a formal recommendation to the ICANN board and its senior staff which ICANN Senior V.P. Kurt Pritz welcomed and asked Chairman Fattal to submit it in writing to ICANN.   

MINC will shortly post the comments and transcripts of MINC Chairman Khaled Fattal recommendation on the IRT report to ICANN as well the text of his intervention.