Public comments are open...again (protect wine Geographical Indications)

In its last communiqué, the GAC had identified certain gTLD strings where further GAC consideration may be warranted at the next GAC meetings to be held in Africa (Durban) next July 2013.

The GAC advised the ICANN Board not to proceed beyond Initial Evaluation with the a certain number of strings including .WINE and .VIN.

It is now possible for the wine Community to comment globally: it is important to remember that ICANN is the organization to provide the rules, not the applicants. Regarding the protection of wine Geographical Indications, my guess is that if a solution should be found, it should be found with ICANN, not wine applicants.

If Wine Geographical Indications should be protected on .WINE and .VIN extensions only, it would absolutely not solve the problem and allow other registries to allow the registration of any Geographical Indications as a domain name: champagne.food and champagnes.food would not be protected.

You can read the information about Public Comments here comment here or directly submit a comment by sending an email at: comments-gac-safeguard-advice-23apr13@icann.org (please copy-paste).