The Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) has made various recommendations to the ICANN Board of Directors about the new gTLD applications.

The GAC Communiqué recommendations include:

• not proceeding beyond Initial Evaluation with the certain geographic strings, including: .shenzhen (IDN in Chinese), .persiangulf, .guangzhou (IDN in Chinese), .amazon (and IDNs in Japanese and Chinese), .patagonia, .thai
• that singular and plural versions of a string could lead to consumer confusion
• providing preventative initial protection to the names and acronyms of intergovernmental organisations (IGOs)

The Asian Domain Name Dispute Resolution Centre (ADNDRC) and ICANN have signed a Memorandum of Understanding establishing ADNDRC as a Uniform Rapid Suspension System (URS) provider.

ADNDRC joins The National Arbitration Forum as a URS Provider.  ICANN has stated that it expects to appoint one or more additional providers in the near future.

The URS is a rights protection mechanism in ICANN’s New gTLDs Program that facilitates rapid suspension of domain names in clear-cut cases of trademark infringement. It is intended to complement the existing UDRP by offering a lower-cost, faster path to resolution

A recent Nominet DRS decision has confirmed that an individual does not have ‘rights’ in their own name – even a very rare one – sufficient to found a case for transfer of an abusively-registered domain name.

The case arose out a bitter family feud.  The domain name hvidbro-mitchell.co.uk was used by Wendy Croxford to vent her frustrations about her ex-husband, Simon Mitchell, whose wife is Maiken Hvidbro-Mitchell. In particular Mrs. Coxford claims he owes her almost £80,000 in unpaid child support payments.

As Marks & Clerk report, a complaint was brought to Nominet requesting that the domain name be transferred to Mrs Hvidbro-Mitchell because it was being used to make “obsessive criticism” of her husband and to cause “anxiety and distress” to her family.

Nominet’s dispute resolution rules provide that the owner of “rights” in a name can object to the “abusive” registration of a domain name. However, merely being known under a family name does not provide a person with rights in that name, particularly in the absence of commercial trading activity under the name or ownership of a registered trade mark. It is also the case that use of a domain name purely “for the purposes of tribute or criticism” is not considered abusive under the rules.

Brand owners that have applied with ICANN for their brand’s TLD are seeking to create their own constituency group, reports IP Watch.

The brand owners would like to get their own registry model, based on their special business model. As all second-level domains would be under the control of the brand owner, they hope for a more lightweight model, with a reduced set of obligations, because they are not open registries and therefore less prone to fraud.

Members of the Government Advisory Committee (GAC) of ICANN are pushing for additional contractual clauses for applicants of new generic top-level domains, reports IP Watch.

As previously noted, parties may object to any of the applied-for new gTLDs on four bases:

• string confusion – the applied-for gTLD string is confusingly similar to an existing TLD or to another applied for gTLD string in the same round of application
• legal rights – the applied-for gTLD string infringes the existing legal rights of the objector
• community – the applied-for gTLD string is contrary to generally accepted legal norms of morality and public order that are recognized under principles of international law
• limited public interest – there is substantial opposition to the gTLD application from a significant portion of the community to which the gTLD string may be explicitly or implicitly targeted

See Baker Hostetler’s summary for an update on the details of these four procedures.

The preliminary prioritisation list of applications for new gTLDs is available here.

Hogan Lovells reports on a decision of the Paris Court of Appeal ruled that the Association Française pour le Nommage Internet en Coopération (AFNIC), the registry for the ‘.fr’ country-code top-level domain, was not liable for failing to freeze or block an infringing domain name on notice by an interested party without a court order.

The court also held that EuroDNS, a Luxembourg-based registrar, was not liable for failing to monitor the registration of potentially infringing domain names, even in the case of well-known trademarks