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.wine is a go

Kevin Murphy, March 26, 2014, 09:54:41 (UTC), Domain Policy

ICANN has approved the new gTLDs .wine and .vin, despite objections from the European Union.
In a resolution this weekend, published today, its board’s New gTLD Program Committee said “that the applications for .WINE and .VIN should proceed through the normal evaluation process.”
The resolution acknowledges the Governmental Advisory Committee’s lack of consensus against the two wine-related gTLDs, but not the EU’s view that geographic indicators such as “Champagne” should be protected.
European nations thought both gTLDs should be put on hold until the applicants agreed to these special protections, but the US, Australia and other nations disagreed.
ICANN sought the legal opinion (pdf) of a French law professor in its decision-making.
The EU is going to be pretty angry about this, but in the absence of a consensus objection from the GAC against the strings, it appears that the NGPC has made the right call in this case.


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Comments (6)

  1. Jean Guillon says:

    What follows is going to be interesting.

  2. Rubens Kuhl says:

    I think .wine and .vin registries are likely to face legal hurdles in european countries. What EC didn’t get from GAC or NGPC, will try to get from national laws and EU directives.
    It also remains to be seen whether EC will rush registries to PDDRPs as soon as the first domain with an origin indicator gets registered by a non-related party.
    If I were the involved registries, I would reserve GIs just in case. These might be valuable names, but they come with too much legal trouble.

    • Good idea.
      Geographical Indications and Appellations of Origin official Databases DO exist. There are 2 official databases worldwide which list them:
      – The database of the OIV (Organisation Internationale de la Vigne et du Vin) which is composed of 44 member states.
      – The database of the European Commission, also called E-BACCHUS which consists of the Register of designations of origin and geographical indications protected in the EU in accordance with Council Regulation (EC). The database also lists non-EU countries’ geographical indications and names of origin protected in the EU in accordance with bilateral agreements on trade in wine concluded between the EU and the non-EU countries’ concerned.

  3. PDDRP.com says:

    Please contact us at Pddrp.com for any info, we are interested. Thank you.

  4. Katim S. Touray says:

    If anyone ever needed proof of ICANN’s inconsistency in its handling of new gTLD applications, this is it. Although the GAC never reached consensus on the .Islam or the .Halal applications, ICANN decided that the applications should be put on hold because of OIC objections submitted outside the new gTLD program processes. ICANN has chosen to on one hand tell the EU to go to hell, and on the other flout its rules by bowing to pressure from the OIC.

    • Rubens Kuhl says:

      Since AGB allows board discretionary power, that so far was only exercised with .islam/.halal, it’s not a question of consistently following GAC or not, it’s whether they assess there will be backfire.

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