Friday, February 8, 2013

.VIN new gTLD: reply to the Government of France

Holly Shadow, LLC (Donuts Inc.) just published its answer to the French GAC Early Warning.

The answer is interesting and explains .VIN is not only used to qualify wine:

"This so noted, we respectfully further submit that the .VIN string may be legitimately applied to terms and uses unrelated to wine. As but one example, VIN is a commonly used acronym for Vehicle Identification Number in the U.S. This is a unique serial number used to identify vehicles. There are other potential uses for the three letters V, I and N—for example, the website www.vin.com is run by the Veterinarian Information Network as a web information resource for veterinary doctors."

...but Registrants (people who buy domain names) with the intention to use these domains to sell wine illegally could have them terminated:

"Donuts will monitor name usage to prevent certain types of abusive activity and may terminate registrations if registrants do not follow all applicable laws. For example, it would be grounds for termination if a .VIN registrant used the gTLD to illegally produce or sell wine."

Regarding French Geographical Indications ("Indicators" in the answer), Donuts (Holly Shadow, LLC) says it has been consulting with wine industry experts and would welcome any constructive advice the Government of France may have. This is being discussed at the moment according to my sources but the text also says: "Donuts does not intend to block second level names beyond those detailed in Specification 5."
Specification 5 can be read on page 285 of the Applicant Guidebook.

If I already have an idea of how all this is going to end, I understand the position of the applicant who has been following the methodology provided by ICANN with its Applicant Guidebook. 

The official document is available online (.VIN answer is available down the page).

.BRAND new gTLD Reports are updated once a month: CLICK HERE !