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ALAC Advice to the ICANN Board

DRAFT IN PDF FORMATRevised 13 September 2013

On 24 June 2013, as requested by the GAC, the Board New gTLD Program Committee (NGPC) considered the issue of singular and plural stings being confusingly similar and decided to let the original process stand (subject to individual objections).

Since that time, the situation has evolved, and we are now in a position where it is difficult to believe that we are using Events and findings which have occurred since then indicate that the transparent, predictable and objective criteria for evaluating confusingly similar strings as called for in by the original GNSO New gTLD Policy recommendations 1 and 9 have not been met, ultimately resulting in Internet end-user confusion.

As examples, recent string similarity objection decisions have ruled:

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The ALAC is particularly concerned with the issue of singular vs plural strings. A central issue is that the "confusingly similar" test relies purely on visual similarity. Based on the initial evaluation (and the recent NGPC decision - http://www.icann.org/en/groups/board/documents/minutes-new-gtld-25jun13-en.htm#2.d), adding an "S" makes it a recognizably different string.

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