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Wine gTLDs get a pass as GAC fails to agree

Kevin Murphy, September 12, 2013, 10:56:52 (UTC), Domain Registries

Applicants for wine-related gTLDs will no longer be opposed by the Governmental Advisory Committee, it has emerged.
Writing to ICANN chair Steve Crocker this week, GAC chair Heather Dryden said that the GAC had failed to reach an agreement on whether to issue formal Advice against the applications.
Three .wine applicants and one .vin applicant are affected.
Some governments are concerned about strings at the second level because quite often a word many people associate primarily with a type of wine is also the protected name of the wine-producing region.
Champagne is probably the best-known example of this.
Nevertheless, the GAC couldn’t reach agreement on whether to provide formal advice to ICANN on this topic, so the applications will be free to proceed along the new gTLD program’s track.

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Comments (1)

  1. I don’t understand the letter that way. I read: ” the GAC advises the ICANN Board that the GAC has finalized its consideration of the strings .wine and .vin and further advises that the applications should proceed through the normal evaluation process”.
    For me it is clear the the GAC advises the ICANN Board that the applications should proceed with no protection of wine GIs.
    It clearly is what the GAC recommends and whatever they recommend is not so important after all.
    What I am sure people will remember, if ICANN approves the GAC advice, is that ICANN will have allowed .WINE and .VIN to be launched with no protection.
    Note I am not commenting the GAC advice here 🙂

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