ICANN’s board of directors has set itself a deadline to come to a decision on special new gTLD protections for the International Olympic Committee and Red Cross/Red Crescent.
In its resolution passed last week, ICANN’S board of directors required the GNSO to accomplish the development of policy to apply second-level domain name protection measures for those related to IOC and Red Cross/Red Crescent. In the event that this is not done before the deadline, ICANN requests the GNSO to provide full information on whether the special protection is needed for these domains, upon what ICANN shall itself take decision on the given issue.
We would remind you that the International Olympic Committee was one of the most consequent (and unexpected) adversaries of implementing new gTLDs. As far back as in 2009 the IOC addressed to ICANN with a letter in which, in particular, they told that the IOC and the Olympic movement could suffer much detriment once the development program for new gTLDs is implemented. It was also stated that the Olympic ‘trademarks has a special status, therefore this is the thing of more importance than corporation’s interests’. The Red Cross/Red Crescent has made similar addresses.
In the outcome, the IOC put a demand that ICANN should have reserved the domain names containing ‘Olympic’ trademarks, similarly to the way it had dealt with domains containing their own trademarks. In 2011 the interim protection to those names, as well as to those of Red Cross/Red Crescent was provided, whereupon the GNSO was commissioned to produce the further policy in this area. Nevertheless, the situation has sufficiently complicated by the fact that another Intergovernmental organizations started to claim the same treatment. To grant then a special one to the IOC and Red Cross/Red Crescent could arouse their strong fury.
Given that new gTLDs are expected to start launching in less than a year, the ICANN is leaning to recommend in January, 2013 an interim protection of these organizations’ trademarks for all new gTLDs. That means, the exact matches with IOC and Red Cross/Red Crescent names, as well as their translations to any language, would be “reserved” or otherwise removed from sale by each new gTLD registry. Upon such decision, the policy development process for applying protection measures to these domains will be continued.
The IOC and Red Cross’ concerns are valid: for ex., the Olympiads attracts great attention of cybersquatters, so once there’re more new top-level domains, the legal use of Olympic marks shall be very hard to track. On the other hand, the resolution on special measures to protect unique trademarks can lead to demands for the same from other entities and corporations. As a result, the new gTLD operators will be considerably limited in their right to register second-level domains.
