Dear all,

In preparation of the discussion on the IGO/INGO matter, please find below a proposal for a letter we could send to the Board.

I suggest to make this part of the deliberations during the extraordinary meeting before we get to the vote. As there is not too much time before the meeting, feedback and questions are welcome so we can advance the discussion as much as possible before we meet.

Kind regards,

Thomas

[  ] October 2025

Protection of IGO/INGO Identifiers

Tripti Sinha, Chair

ICANN Board

Dear Tripti,

Thank you for your letter of 16 September 2025 regarding the scope of protection for IGO and INGO names in future rounds of new gTLDs, and the potential for this issue to give rise to a global public interest concern.  

This is a complex issue.  The GNSO Council notes the following:

• Policy potentially impacting on this issue is set out across various documents, including the following:
• the Final Report on the Protection of IGO and INGO Identifiers in All gTLDs Policy Development Process (IGO-INGO PDP Final Report);
• The Final Report of the GNSO New gTLD Subsequent Procedures PDP (SubPro Final Report); 
• Phase 1 Final Report of the EPDP on Internationalized Domain Names (IDN PDP Final Report).
• These policy recommendations have been adopted by the Board. 
• Recommendations from the IGO-INGO PDP make reference to the Applicant Guidebook applicable to the 2012 Round (the AGB 2012).  
• The AGB 2012 was the mechanism by which the 2007 policy recommendations were implemented.  There is a new AGB (the 2026 AGB) which will be applicable to the next Round of new gTLDs (the 2026 Round).
• Much has changed since the 2012 Round, including new terminology and definitions, and a more complex assessment of string similarity to reflect the availability of IDN variants at the top level in the 2026 Round. 

The scope of protection to be afforded to IGO and INGO names must be considered in this context.  

We have heard from both staff and the Board that the two options set out in the staff briefing paper might serve to implement the relevant policy recommendations.  Members of Council, on the instructions of their respective SGs and Cs have differing views as to which option best reflects the policy recommendations, from which we conclude that both options are plausible. It is not the role of the GNSO Council to pick between two plausible implementations - we see that as the responsibility of the Board. We ask therefore that the Board instruct staff to proceed with implementation in the manner that you believe is the most appropriate to meet the intent of the policy recommendations.

Although our GNSO Operating Procedures do not directly cover this scenario, we consider there to be support for referring this back to the Board within paragraph 14 of the PDP Manual, which deals with the situation where staff’s proposed implementation is considered inconsistent with the GNSO Council recommendations.  

Based on the preference you expressed in your letter it appears that the following outcome would be unlikely, but for the avoidance of doubt if the Board and staff were to reach the conclusion that the implementation described in Option 1 should be adopted, we note that the Board proposes that the relevant protected organizations will be contacted after String Confirmation Day to ensure they are aware of any applied-for strings that could be considered confusingly similar to those on the Reserved Names list.  We also note that the Board would encourage the GAC to likewise contact the relevant organizations, and that you anticipate the possibility that the GAC might issue consensus advice regarding applications for strings that appear to be confusingly similar to the strings on the Reserved Names list. These steps seem sensible to ensure that the relevant protected organizations would be made aware of confusingly similar applications and would be able to utilize such challenge mechanisms as they deem appropriate.  

Sincerely,

Nacho Amadoz and Tomslin Samme-Nlar

Interim co-chairs of the GNSO