Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
6.188
In anticipation of the July 2013 meeting of ICANN in Durban, the Organ-
ization for an International Geographical Indications Network (oriGIn) called
on ICANN to set up a dispute resolution system so that prior rights for
geographic indications could be taken into account in the process for the
attribution of new gTLDs (Saez, 2013). However, the participating countries
were unable to agree. Ermert (2013) reported that US and Australian repre-
sentatives criticised as discriminatory the European Federation of Origin
Wines (EFOW) action to use an ICANN GAC recommendation to the
ICANN Board to block the application process for .vin and .wine. Ermert
noted that 'Governments at ICANN in the past were able to agree on stern
protection of trademark rights in the new TLD procedure, but the protection of
geographical indications is an unresolved issue in ongoing international negoti-
ations'.
200
Although the UDRP will remain as the principal avenue for the resolution of
new gTLD disputes, ICANN has proposed a Uniform Rapid Suspension
(URS) System for appropriate cases.
201
This provides for (i) a URS Lock, which
prevents a domain name from being updated, transferred or deleted; (ii) URS
Suspension; or (iii) URS Rollback, the reversion of a domain name to a
Non-URS state.
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2. Domain Names at WIPO
Under the UDRP, WIPO is the leading ICANN-accredited domain name
dispute resolution provider (see Forrest, 2013). While the mandatory appli-
cation of the UDRP is limited to domain names registered in gTLDs, such as
.com, .net, and .org, WIPO's arbitration centre also assists country code top
level domain (ccTLD) registries in their establishment of registration condi-
tions and dispute resolution procedures, which are mostly modelled after the
UDRP, but may take account of the particular circumstances and needs of
individual ccTLDs. The WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Centre in Septem-
ber 2013 provided domain name dispute resolution services to 69 ccTLD
registries.
202
6.190
The possible need for the protection of GIs in the Domain Name System
(DNS) was discussed in the final report of the first WIPO Internet Domain
Name Process dated 30 April 1999. The possibility of extending the UDRP to
6.191
200
Ibid.
201
See http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/urs.
202
Standing Committee on the Law of Trademarks, Industrial Designs and Geographical Indications, Thirtieth
Session, 4-8 November 2013, WIPO Doc. SCT/30/5, 'Update on Trademark-Related Aspects of the Domain
Name System', 20 September 2013, para 7.
