[council] FW: GNSO Council Resolution passed on 15 July 2010

[Glen de Saint Géry <Glen@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Councillors,



Ahead of the official Council minutes, the following resolution was passed at 
the Council meeting on 15 July 2010.



 Mary Wong proposed an amendment to the motion  on the  New gTLD Recommendation 
(as amended 15 July 2010) that was made by Edmon Chung and seconded by  Rafik 
Dammak; Edmon and Rafik accepted the amendment as friendly.



Note: The original motion was discussed in the Council meeting on 20 May and 
deferred to 10 June. In making the amended motion, Edmon submitted a redline 
version to the Council list on 2 June 2010

(http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/council/msg08962.html) and Rafik 
accepted the amendment as friendly on 4 June 2010

(http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/council/msg09000.html)



WHEREAS:



·         The Draft Applicant Guidebook, Version 4 does not include an Extended 
Review option for strings that fail the initial evaluation for confusing 
similarity and likelihood to confuse;



·         The GNSO Council recognizes that time is of the essence in sending 
feedback to ICANN staff on the Draft Applicant Guidebook;



·         The IDNG Drafting Team established by the GNSO Council has discussed 
various circumstances where applicants for strings that may be designated as 
confusingly similar in the initial evaluation may be able to present a case 
showing that the string is not detrimentally similar to another string;



·         The GNSO Council in Recommendation #2 on the GNSO Final Report on the 
Introduction of New gTLDs in September 2007 intended to prevent confusing and 
detrimental similarity and not similarity that could serve the users of the 
Internet;



·         A Twenty-one day public comment period was held, comments were 
received and considered by the Council;



RESOLVED:



·         The GNSO Council takes action in its meeting of 15 July 2010 to send 
the letter.



PROPOSED LETTER:



To: Kurt Pritz and members of the ICANN New GTLD Implementation Team,

CC: ICANN Board



The GNSO Council requests a change to Module 2 of the Draft Applicant 
Guidebook. Specifically, we request that the section on "Outcomes of the String 
Similarity Review" be amended to allow applicants to request an Extended Review 
under applicable terms similar to those provided for other issues such as "DNS 
Stability: String Review Procedure". We further request that a section be added 
on ³String Similarity - Extended Review² that parallels other such sections in 
Module 2.



This request is seen as urgent because there are conditions under which it may 
be justified for applicants for a string which has been denied further 
processing based on confusing similarity by the Initial Evaluation to request 
an extended evaluation. This Extended Review would evaluate extenuating 
circumstances in the application which may be such that the similarity is not 
actually detrimental. This may occur, inter alia, in cases such as:



·         The same Registry Operator (for an existing gTLD or a proposed new 
gTLD) could apply for a string that is similar to an existing or applied for 
string in a manner that is not detrimentally similar from a user point of view. 
For example, it is possible that an applicant could apply for both a gTLD with 
a conventional ASCII label and a corresponding internationalized gTLD (IDN 
gTLD) that could be deemed to be similar but not cause the detrimental 
confusion that the GNSO recommendation was trying to avoid.



·         A situation where there is an agreement between a new applicant 
Registry Operator and the Registry Operator of an existing gTLD that allows for 
better service for the users in the geographical area where the new gTLD will 
be offered. For example, MuseDoma, the Registry Operator for .museum could 
enter into an agreement with a new gTLD applicant to offer an IDN version of 
.museum for a specific language community. The two strings might be judged to 
be similar but their delegation would not cause detrimental confusion.



We thank you for your prompt attention to this GNSO Council request.



The motion carried unanimously in the Contracted Parties House and the motion 
carried in Non Contracted Parties House with one abstention.



Jaime Wagner(ISPCP) abstained providing the following reason:

Because there were strong discussions in the ISPCP and though I am in favour, 
there is some concern about the motion and it is better for me to abstain than 
express my personal views.

Thank you.

Kind regards,



Glen





Glen de Saint Géry

GNSO Secretariat

gnso.secretariat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

http://gnso.icann.org