[gnso-igo-ingo] Objective Criteria Shortlist

["Claudia MACMASTER TAMARIT" <MACMASTER@xxxxxxx>]

Hi all,



We strongly support the effort to work efficiently and steadily towards an 
objective and non-discriminatory Recommendation regarding special protections 
for IGO-INGO names.  In this light, we suggest the following prioritized list 
of criteria:



1)      Membership (e.g., 1+ country represented)

2)      Organizational mandate to serve the international public good (e.g., 
Statutes, Bylaws, Treaty, etc.)

3)      Character string to be protected is already protected in law (e.g., 
trademark law, Article 6ter)

4)      Non-profit status

5)      Work/serve on international level (e.g., 1+ countries or 1+ 
international organization)

6)      Engage individuals globally (e.g., involving persons from 1+ country)

7)      Internet presence (e.g.,  at least 1 domain name)



Please note the last criteria is suggested in light of our recent conversations 
(and could be expanded to include evidence of defending that presence, if 
appropriate.)  Of course any discussion of an organization's efforts to defend 
against domain name abuse must be contextualized.



There is a deep irony in requiring "vulnerable" organizations to show that they 
have and can shell out thousands and thousands on a yearly basis for domain 
name abuse.  Such an exercise needs to be contextualized with reference to the 
organization's mandate and operational realities.



In regards to the attached, we disagree that "The most objective, and useful 
criterion to the inquiry is the existence of national laws or treaties that 
prohibit the unauthorized use of the words/designations in question" for the 
following reasons;



a.       The relationship between the aspect protected by treaty and the 
alphanumeric string to be protected may be far from direct or objectively 
assessed (unless, e.g., it is the Paris Convention, TRIPs, etc. where TM = name 
or 6ter protection = name).



b.      Relatedly, the relevance a treaty may have in regards to the protection 
of a name in a domain name may not be readily evident (unless, e.g., again, the 
name is directly protected).



c.       Reference to a treaty may exclude many organizations (for example, 
organizations without trademark protection for their names across multiple 
jurisdictions) without any legitimate justification.



d.      We should remember there is nothing in the language of the charter that 
limits us when discussing the relevance of treaty protections.  The cases for 
INGOs, IGOs and the IOC and the Red Cross may be vastly different and merit 
individual analysis.



As a final note, we suggest the top two (2) criteria are of priority.



Both (1) membership composition and (2) possessing an organizational mandate to 
serve the international public good are criteria directed to including only 
organizations with a truly global reach and which serve the public good.



Sincerely,

Claudia

Claudia MacMaster Tamarit, Esq.
Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Manager

International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
ISO Central Secretariat
T:  + 41 22 749 0441
F:  + 41 22 733 3430
E:  macmaster@xxxxxxx<mailto:macmaster@xxxxxxx>
www.iso.org<http://www.iso.org/>

--- Begin Message ---

• To: "gnso-igo-ingo-qc@xxxxxxxxx" <gnso-igo-ingo-qc@xxxxxxxxx>
• Subject: [gnso-igo-ingo-qc] Qualification Criteria Group - Shortlisting/Prioritization
• From: Kiran Malancharuvil <kmalancharuvil@xxxxxxxxx>
• Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2013 20:02:29 +0000

Dear Qualification Criteria Group Members,

As per Thomas' email below, please send your input regarding 
Shortlisting/Prioritization of the Qualification Criteria that the group has 
developed.

As group leaders, we submit the following preliminary opinions regarding the 
Qualification Criteria:

The most objective, and useful criterion to the inquiry is the existence of 
national laws or treaties that prohibit the unauthorized use of the 
words/designations in question.

We also feel that "status" is an appropriate, objective, inquiry, as long as 
the language is changed to "not-for-profit status" rather than "charitable" 
status, which may be misleading.

We do not believe that the following are useful inquiries for the ultimate 
purpose of this discussion:

        Recognized relationship with countries/IGOs/INGOs
        Work provides services to a number of countries
        Recognized relationship with services to the public/individuals
        Organizations serve a public good
        Organizations can use RPMs
        Organizations communicate directly with the public
        Membership composition
        Years in existence

While some of these items provide supportive reasons or benefits justifying 
protection, and various IGOs and INGOs satisfy a number of these items, they 
are not as objective as national laws or treaties are as qualification criteria.

Please provide your comments as soon as possible.


Best regards,

Jim Bikoff, David Heasley and Kiran Malancharuvil

Kiran J. Malancharuvil
Silverberg, Goldman & Bikoff, L.L.P.
Georgetown Place
1101 30th Street NW, Suite 120
Washington, DC 20007
(202) 944-3307 - office
kmalancharuvil@xxxxxxxxx

This message from the law firm of Silverberg, Goldman & Bikoff LLP may contain 
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error, please call us immediately at (202) 944-3307 or contact us by e-mail at 
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-----Original Message-----
From: owner-gnso-igo-ingo@xxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-gnso-igo-ingo@xxxxxxxxx] On 
Behalf Of Thomas Rickert
Sent: Monday, January 21, 2013 2:31 PM
To: gnso-igo-ingo@xxxxxxxxx
Subject: [gnso-igo-ingo] preparation of the next call


All,
in preparation of the next call, I would like to remind you of the next steps:

Ideally, the sub-teams will have discussed the contents of the respective 
spreadsheets and achieved two results:

- Shortlisting

Please identify, if you can, arguments or proposals that can be deleted because 
they do not help us in finding a solution.

To give you an example: In my view, there was consensus or at least a vast 
majority of the participants found that putting the designations in question on 
the reserved names list would not be the way to go for various reasons. As a 
consequence, the line in the spreadsheet dealing with the reserved names list 
would not make it to the shortlist and could be marked deleted (see Protections 
sheet, line 4).

We would still write a few lines about points that have been eliminated during 
the process of shortlisting, but by narrowing down the options, we will be able 
to focus on the relevant points.

- Priorization

Please try to prioritize the points that have made it to the shortlist. I am 
not sure whether this is possible in all areas, but it would be helpful to find 
out whether the sub-groups are able to identify points that are more and those 
who are less relevant.

An example might be that - at least this was my recollection of last week's 
call - the organizations seeking protection felt that harm to the global public 
interest (Nature of the Problem spreadsheet line 9)  was deemed a most 
important point while the issue of cost of defensive registration (same 
spreadsheet line 4) seemed to be discussed more controversially.

Hopefully, we will be able to discuss the outcome of your discussions on 
Wednesday.

Please submit your feedback to Berry by the COB on Tuesday so he can 
incorporate your work into a single document. As we plan to migrate from 
spreadsheet to text format, your feedback is most welcome in text format.

Should we not hear from you, we will discuss some hand-picked questions during 
the call to advance our discussions.

As indicated during the call, the plan is to write a report on the basis of the 
feedback we have after the call and have that ready for the call next week.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thomas

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