Famous Four Media issued a statement on the ICC decision granting an objection to Famous Four Applications for .Sport, finding that the other applicant for the gTLD. Sport, SportAccord represented the community of Sports, saying that they intend to “rigorously pursue all available legal avenues available to it to have the decision independently reviewed by ICANN and/or others as the case may be, and reversed.”
We found the decision pretty shocking ourselves; to find the one group which i would venture to say 95% of the world’s population never heard of (including myself) represented sports, well its a pretty wild decision which you can read here.
Famous Four Media and its applicant dot Sport Limited maintain that the word “sport” is understood by everyone to be a totally generic word and should not be claimed by one undelineated “community”.
The decision strikes right at the heart of the concept of freedom of expression, and significantly erodes transparency and predictability in the gTLD program. In particular, it confirms the concerns expressed by the NCUC at the time of the formulation of the ICANN Final Report in 2007 and the subsequent rules in the Applicant Guidebook , that the community objection process could be hijacked by competing applicants.
The Panellist demonstrates a large number of inconsistencies from both procedural and argument points of view, poor conclusions and displays a perceptible bias towards the Objector even prior to any conclusions being drawn. For example:
“it is the Appointed Expert’s view that the level of global recognition of any institution should be analysed within the context of the community that such institution is claiming to be a part of, not the public in general.
” This argument is entirely circular, in that it presupposes a community exists, and not in keeping at all with the Guidebook, which clearly denotes one factor for standing as “level of global recognition” the Objector] acts for a preponderant part of such community” (at paragraph 74).
Sports play a part the lives of nearly every human being on the planet – nearly 7 billion people. It is not exclusive to Olympians or global or national federations. To assert that SportAccord acts for a preponderant part of the sport community has no basis in fact.
The fact that the media (which may constitute a different community) or viewers are unable to be part of this association is irrelevant to consider Objector as a delineated community.…
