Representatives of France, Spain, the UK and the European Commission, members of the Government Advisory Committee (GAC ICANN) have filed official appeals with ICANN to review its ruling that allows new .wine and .vin gTLD applications to proceed. As was earlier reported, the majority of European countries, supported by several Latin American countries, have protection of geographic indicators as a condition for delegating the domains. This would help prevent random registration of domain names like champagne.wine or bordeaux.vin, including by those who have nothing to do with production of top quality wines. However, the United States, Australia and New Zealand did not share the same view; therefore, GAC failed to reach an agreement and gave ICANN an opportunity to proceed to the next step in processing applications for .wine and .vin domain names.
ICANN introduced the application procedure and review conditions in 1999. The current situation represents the first time that the governments have filed Requests for Reconsideration with ICANN. France, Spain, the UK and the European Commission argue that wine producers must be protected, and refer to procedural violations by ICANN when the decision was made. Experts say the chance is small that the appeal will succeed.
