Hello Paul and everyone,
In initiating the current PDP and this Working Group, the GNSO Council was careful not to presume either that the existing dispute resolution processes should be changed, or that a new procedure would be created. For your reference, the specific language used by the Council in its resolution was as follows:
"The GNSO Council hereby initiates a PDP to evaluate: (i) whether the UDRP and/or URS should be amended (to enable their access and use by IGOs and INGOs whose identifiers had been recommended for protection by the IGO-INGO PDP WG) and if so, in what way; or (ii) whether a separate narrowly-tailored procedure modeled on these curative rights protection measures to apply only to protected IGO and INGO identifiers should be developed.”
The Charter as approved by the GNSO Council following its initiation of the PDP was also similarly neutral:
http://gnso.icann.org/en/drafts/igo-ingo-crp-access-charter-24jun14-en.pdf. The Charter also explicitly lists certain preliminary activities and research that ought to be conducted by the WG in order to assist with its evaluation of whether changes or a new procedure is needed.
On the general question of the relationship between this WG’s work and the issue of IGO-INGO protections as a whole, both the Council and the Board’s New gTLD Program Committee (NGPC) have been careful also to “carve out” the question of second level dispute resolution (to be dealt with by this WG) from their ongoing discussions relating to the remaining GNSO consensus recommendations that are yet to be adopted by the Board (i.e. duration and nature of protections for certain Red Cross organizational names and identifiers, and for IGO acronyms). See, for example, the NGPC letter to the GNSO Council of 16 June 2014 that specifically notes the role of this WG:
http://gnso.icann.org/en/correspondence/chalaby-to-robinson-16jun14-en.pdf and the affirmation of this point by Jonathan Robinson, GNSO Chair, in his letter to the GAC Chair of 25 June 2014:
http://gnso.icann.org/en/correspondence/robinson-to-dryden-25jun14-en.pdf.
The GNSO Council’s intention therefore seems to be for this current WG to begin and carry on its work in accordance with the approved Charter, as would be the case with all other GNSO Working Groups. While there may be other “moving parts” that relate to other aspects of the original PDP recommendations, the Council has indicated that these will be managed by the Council separately from the policy question that has been referred to this WG for the current PDP.
I hope the above clarifies the situation. Staff will, of course, prepare all the necessary background documentation and provide an initial informational briefing to all WG members once the group commences its work, so that everyone is up to date on both the task that has been referred to this WG as well as the status of any potentially related updates on other recommendations being considered by the GNSO Council.
As mentioned previously, this WG , like all other GNSO WGs, also has a Council liaison (Petter Rindforth). During the course of this PDP, should the WG have any further questions about (for example) possible implications of developments elsewhere on its work, Petter will be the primary interface between the Council and the group on these and other such questions.
Again, I hope this helps!
Cheers
Mary
Mary Wong
Senior Policy Director
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names & Numbers (ICANN)
Telephone: +1 603 574 4892
Email: mary.wong@icann.org