Dear Working Group members,

For your information, especially those members who have not been able to attend recent Working Group meetings, the co-chairs would like to invite more discussion and participation from everyone as our group works toward developing a final recommendation relating to the issue of IGO jurisdictional immunity. As such, if you have not been able to participate in the group’s recent deliberations on this topic, please be sure to review the most recent documents and call proceedings; in particular, the document summarizing all the options and the related Working Group calls on the topic, posted at https://community.icann.org/x/mwghB.

FURTHER BACKGROUND:

• In the Initial Report, the Working Group had recommended (as Recommendation #4) in part that no change be made to the Mutual Jurisdiction clause of the current UDRP and URS and that a jurisdictional immunity claim (made in response by an IGO to a court filing by a losing respondent) should be raised in and decided by the court. Consequently, the Working Group published two options for public comment – both relating to possible mechanisms to deal with the situation where the IGO succeeds in demonstrating its immunity to the court.

• In reviewing the many public comments received on the two options, individual Working Group members proposed a number of additional options for consideration. With one exception*, all the existing options remain under discussion but the Working Group will need to come to a consensus on which of the remaining options will be its final recommendation on this topic.
  • (*The exception is what is known as Option 5 in the document posted on the wiki page)

REQUEST FROM THE CO-CHAIRS:

• As the plan is to have all our final recommendations completed, and their text approved by the Working Group before the next ICANN Public Meeting at the end of October, all Working Group members – especially those who have not been actively participating in the ongoing discussion - are encouraged to weigh in on this mailing list with your views before our next scheduled call on Thursday 7 September.

Thank you.

Cheers

Mary