The following individuals composed an initial draft of this Statement [PDF, 251 KB] after discussion of the topic within At-Large and on the Mailing Lists:
- Rinalia Abdul Rahim, ALAC member from the Asian, Australasian and Pacific Islands Regional At-Large Organization (APRALO) and ALAC Executive Committee member; and
- Hong Xue, At-Large member from APRALO.
On 26 August 2013, this statement was posted on the At-Large Rights Protection Mechanism (RPM) Requirements Workspace.
On that same day, Olivier Crépin-Leblond, Chair of the ALAC, requested ICANN Policy Staff in support of the ALAC to send a Call for Comments on the draft Statement to all At-Large members via the ALAC-Announce Mailing list.
On 3 September 2013, a version incorporating the comments received was posted on the aforementioned workspace and the Chair requested that Staff open an ALAC ratification vote on the proposed Statement.
On 11 September 2013, Staff confirmed that the online vote resulted in the ALAC endorsing the Statement with 13 votes in favor, 0 votes against, and 0 abstentions. You may review the result independently under: http://www.bigpulse.com/pollresults?code=33967M4dSTCKZyYJBKNV7SGY
Summary
- The At-Large community appreciates the improvements made by ICANN in the revised Rights Protection Mechanism Requirements (RPM) released on 6 August 2013 [PDF, 235 KB].
- The ALAC has emphasized in its previous Policy Advice that the At-Large Community firmly believes, "ICANN's Rights Protection Measures should treat the trademarks in any language or character set equally, the principle being that Internet users in any language community should be equally protected against confusion."
- Noting the SSAC opinion that, "centralizing variant generation and checking would bring consistency to the variants generated [PDF 706 KB]," we hereby advise ICANN to require the Trademark Clearinghouse to implement IDN variant policies itself to ensure the integrity and consistency of user experience across new gTLDs and across scripts.