Trademark Groups urged ICANN to follow International Law not GAC advice and to approves the new gTLD application for .Amazon
Claudio Digangi spoke on behalf of the International Trademark Association (INTA) on particularly on the geographic names issue.
“INTA strongly supports the recent views expressed by the United States. in particular, that it does not view the sovereignty as a valid basis for objecting to the use of terms and we have concerns about the effect of such claims on the integrity of the process.”
It is INTA’s position that generally accepted principles of international law provide ICANN a framework for assessing potential noncommunity based objections to the delegation of particular applied-for strings associated with geographic terms.
These legal norms establish that nation states do not possess exclusive rights to geographic terms and the rights of trademark owners as established under international frameworks, including binding international treaties, must be recognized.
By adhering to these established principles, ICANN will assure its decisions advance the global public interest in the introduction of new gtlds and to remains available to consult with ICANN on these important issues. thank you.
J. Scott Evans of Yahoo! who is also as a Board Member and an officer of the International Trademark Association (ITA) and a founding member of the IPC, a current member of the Business Constituency (BC) , and a founding member of the Brand Registry Group, was quick to agree with Claudio:
It was my understanding, and the understanding of my organizations both here and outside of ICANN, that the role of the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) is to look at the laws that exist in our world today that the governments have years together and working cooperatively and through treaties and negotiated their national laws and international laws and provide you with advice based on those precepts as they exist.
There is no international recognition of country names as protection and they cannot trump trademark rights.
So giving countries a block on a name violates international law, so you can’t do it.
Now, if they want to object under the community objection process and bring their claim and have it looked at under the law as it exists, that’s correct, but a blanket prohibition from a mark like dot amazon that has trademark strategies, registrations from the very countries that are objecting, that own all the second-level domains in the country code top-level domain from those very countries is wrong and i believe it sets a very dangerous precedent.…
