My letter to the ICANN board regarding the Protection of Wine Geographical Indications

Reading and watching the ICANN new gTLD program development with its lack of protection for entire Communities and groups, I decided to send a few tips to the board with the hope they will have a look at it. At this point, it does not matter whether they can help or not because the program is not launched yet. If ICANN wants to protect Wine Geographical Indications: there is still time.

This is how starts my letter to the attention of Mr Fadi Chehadé, CEO of ICANN and other members of the ICANN board:

Object of the letter: "Hints and solution for the protection of Wine Geographical Indications in the ICANN new gTLD program."

Dear Mr Fadi Chehadé, CEO of ICANN,

As a person involved - since 2008 - in the wine domain names that have just been introduced by the ICANN new gTLD program, I have been very happy to point out that there were 4 new gTLD applications posted on Reveal Day, June the 13th 2012: 3 applications for the .wine Top-Level Domain (in English) and one for .vin (in French).
Even if these applications are standard ones, it shows there is - definitely - a Wine community on Internet.

As I do not like to "multi-post", the rest of this letter should be published online soon and it is possible ICANN publishes it in its correspondences.

Update (April the 4): the article was published on CircleId with 719 views already.

New gTLDs: 2 major news

2 important information were published recently:

1. Revised Registry Agreement (RRA) posted for Review is available here;
2. GAC draft gTLD agenda for Beijing and advice to the ICANN Board on controversial or sensitive strings and applications is published here.

Slides of last ICANN webinar are available

Agenda on the slides:

1. New gTLD Program Update Christine Willett;
2. VP gTLD Operations + New gTLD Stability & Security Jeff Moss;
3. Chief Security Officer + New gTLD Operational Readiness Fadi Chehadé;
4. President & CEO + Questions.

Content:

1. New gTLD Program Timeline;
2. Initial Evaluation Results;
3. Initial Evaluation Reports;
4. Finalizing Initial Evaluation Reports;
5. Initial Evaluation Panel Stats;
6. Contracting Phase: Registry Agreement Eligibility;
7. Pre-Delegation Testing Pilot Update;
8. Pre-Delegation Testing;
9. Customer Service Center Status;
10. Trademark Clearinghouse;
11. Objections & Dispute Resolution;
12. Independent Objector;
13. Beijing New gTLD Sessions;
14. Security, Stability, & Resiliency (SSR) Update;
15. New gTLD Security Stability & Resiliency (SSR) Update;
16. Root Zone Management;
17. Root Server System Readiness Progress Report;
18. Operational Readiness in the context of SSR;
19. Dealing with unforeseen (SSR) effects of new TLD delegations;
20. SSR and new TLDs: A community effort;
21. New gTLD Operational Readiness.

Agenda published prior to publishing the slides:

1. Initial Evaluation (IE);
2. Update Pre-delegation testing & pilot;
3. Contracting Rights;
4. Protections;
5. Closed generics;

Download the presentation (PDF file)

Why won't ICANN protect wine Geographical Indications?

Trademark Clearinghouse - Introduction

.VIN applicant passes ICANN Initial Evaluation

First Donuts gTLD clears IE! Strong scores for tech, financial, background checks. On to next steps! #newgtlds #icann

— Donuts (@DonutsInc) March 22, 2013