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GNSO wins minor victory in Trademark+50 dispute

Kevin Murphy, June 6, 2013, 09:26:58 (UTC), Domain Policy

The ICANN board has rescheduled an important decision for trademark owners, apparently at the behest of members of the Generic Names Supporting Organization Council.
The board’s New gTLD Program Committee was due to vote June 11 on whether to approve the rejection of a Reconsideration Request filed by the Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group.
But the item has been removed from the agenda and will now instead be discussed at a new June 18 meeting that appears to have been specially scheduled for the purpose.
The rescheduling follows an appeal by GNSO Councillor Jeff Neuman directly to the committee and other senior ICANNers.
Neuman and others were concerned that a June 11 decision would preempt a discussion of the issue slated for the Council’s June 13 meeting, which would have been very bad for board-GNSO relations.
For the full background, read this post.
Essentially, Neuman and other councilors are worried that ICANN seems to be riding roughshod over the GNSO in an attempt to make a proposal known as “Trademark+50” a part of the new gTLD program.
Trademark+50 is a mechanism that will greatly expand the number of strings trademark owners can submit to the Trademark Clearinghouse and get limited protection for.
The NCSG’s Reconsideration Request had asked ICANN to reconsider its classification of the proposal as an “implementation” change that didn’t require GNSO “policy” review.
But the ICANN board’s Board Governance Committee, which adjudicates such matters, last month rejected the request in what I would describe as a sloppily argued and disconcertingly adversarial decision.
It’s now up to the New gTLD Program Committee, acting for the full board, to rubber-stamp the rejection, clearing the path for Trademark+50 to become law for new gTLD registries.
Rescheduling the decision won’t change the outcome, in my view. Trademark+50 is very probably a done deal.
But voting before the GNSO Council even had a chance to put its concerns to the board would have given fuel to the argument that ICANN ignores the GNSO when it is politically expedient to do so.
ICANN may have dodged a bullet for now, but the dispute continues.

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