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We're happy to inform you that many of you have expressed an interest in being involved in the At-Large New gTLD working group focussed on the deliberations of the Implementation Recommendation Team ("IRT") which is to draft a report for the Board by 24th April. The objective of this working group is to address the concerns of holders of trademarks in the context of the New gTLD programme. Further information (English only) may be found at: http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-6-06mar09-en.htm.

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The IRT process itself will be conducted largely in english-only. The At-Large community members participating in discussing the work of the IRT and ensuring that IRT participants who are from the At-Large community are supported in putting forward the views of At-Large can be supported in English and Spanish, with respect to telephonic meeting interpretation and to the extent possible document translation, so don't let language stand in your way of participating in this key policy development process.

Joint Statement from ALAC / At-Large and NCUC made at Sydney Meeting re IRT Report

The following text was read to the Record at the Public Session at the Sydney ICANN Meeting 35 Thursday 25th June 2009. Please also see transcript of this session for more details.

The At-Large Community, the At-Large Advisory Committee and the Non-Commercial Users Constituency of ICANN are on record as strongly supporting the creation of new gTLDs. With respect to the Final IRT Report, those members of the At-Large Advisory Committee and representatives of certain At-Large Structures present in Sydney join the NCUC in making the following statement:

The process to move forward with changes to the Draft Applicant's Guidebook requires the legitimacy of full community participation and full transparency. In the case of the IRT Report, we had neither transparency nor openness.

The IRT Report and its recommendations harm the interests of domain name registrants and Internet end users, and consequently we must raise our serious concerns to the bulk of its recommendations.

To be more specific:

The Globally Protected Marks List – the GPML database- is a matter well beyond ICANN's scope and its core competence. It presumes to be able to resolve an issue that continues to divide full-time trademark experts.

The attempt to create the GPML has already revealed numerous substantial challenges; its development has the strong potential to delay, rather than to speed, the implementation of new gTLDs.

The GPML takes no consideration of the actual limits of rights and protections allowed to trademarks. In the real world, trademark owners apply for a trademark in a specific class of goods and services, and their use is bound to that class or classes and subject to territorial and other well known recognized limitations. In particular, trademark law does not regulate non-commercial speech. By protecting a string of letters in all new gTLDs, the GPML would extend trademarks into new gTLDs far beyond the bounds of their class of goods and services, far beyond existing national laws and international treaties.

We have serious issues with the Uniform Rapid Suspension Service (URS) as proposed. For instance, the URS mechanism subverts conventional UDRP practice as it gives entirely insufficient time for notice to the registrant of the pending dispute. Thus, the registrant is unfairly limited in his/her right of response and the process is missing the fundamental principle of due process.

We are opposed to the IRT proposal´s policy recommendation to move to a Thick Whois without doing a privacy analysis, nor taking into account national laws nor International Privacy Standards, such as 1980 OECD Guidelines, the Privacy Convention 108 and the EU Data Protection Directive.

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