Open letter to ICANN from the Legal Counsels of intergovernmental organizations

[Konstantinos Komaitis]

Here we have a very bad precedent set - the fact that ICANN was willing to entertain the demands (partial) of IOC and the Red Cross would inevitably create problems and it has. These IGOs believe that they should have the same rights as these two organizations, and they sort of have a point if you put all of them within the same basket of Treaty organizations. But, the issue here is much bigger - I think we should make clear that ICANN is neither a legislator nor an enforcer of trademark rights. What these organizations are asking ICANN is to interpret trademark law Treaties - this is just huge and problematic. I have blogged about it here: http://www.komaitis.org/1/post/2011/12/we-dont-accept-any-more-reservations-icann-pressured-to-reserve-names.html

KK

Dr. Konstantinos Komaitis,

Senior Lecturer,
Director of Postgraduate Instructional Courses
Director of LLM Information Technology and Telecommunications Law
University of Strathclyde,
The Law School,
Graham Hills building,
50 George Street, Glasgow G1 1BA
UK
tel: +44 (0)141 548 4306
http://www.routledgemedia.com/books/The-Current-State-of-Domain-Name-Regulation-isbn9780415477765
Selected publications: http://hq.ssrn.com/submissions/MyPapers.cfm?partid=501038
Website: www.komaitis.org<http://www.komaitis.org>

From: NCSG-Discuss [mailto:NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On Behalf Of McTim
Sent: Τρίτη, 20 Δεκεμβρίου 2011 6:29 πμ
To: NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: Re: [NCSG-Discuss] Open letter to ICANN from the Legal Counsels of intergovernmental organizations

Hi David,
On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 8:28 AM, David Cake <dave at difference.com.au<mailto:dave at difference.com.au>> wrote:

       The arguments against are all similar/equivalent.
       The arguments for are different, however.
       I think the position can be argued that treaties/legislation granting special rights to the IOC and RC have strong arguments against them, they have nevertheless been ratified/passed and it is not ICANNs position to reopen the issue but simply to acknowledge decisions already made.


International treaty rights give special privileges in the DNS?

I thought that was done by RFC?

.example as well as example.org<http://example.org> for instance.



While the other rights being asked for are not currently reflected in legislation or treaty, and it IS within ICANNs purview to review (and reject if appropriate) requests to grant new rights.
       I'm not saying I personally take this position. I personally think the IOC request is an ambit claim and the case in favour is insufficient. But I think that someone who takes the IOC and RC treaty justification seriously could quite consistently accept the IOC and RC positions, while rejecting the other IGOs seeking to protect their aconyms.
Personally, I think the RC case for special treatment is considerably stronger than the IOCs, and the IOCs case far stronger than other other IGOs. I very much think the three different cases should be argued on their respective merits.

Everybody thinks they are special, and everybody wants a pony.

--
Cheers,

McTim
"A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A route indicates how we get there."  Jon Postel
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ncuc.org/pipermail/ncuc-discuss/attachments/20111220/9480207a/attachment-0001.html>