Dear IRT members,

I’m writing to follow up on Dennis’ email (below) and the discussion at the last IRT meeting, concerning public comments submitted questioning the fairness of limiting the Exception Procedure for the protected names to just the protected organizations. The basic concern expressed was that this potentially prevents third parties with legitimate rights from also applying for good faith registrations.

As described on the IRT call, the scope of our current implementation is limited to what the policy recommendations actually are. In this case, the recommendation for an Exception Procedure that was approved by the GNSO Council and the ICANN Board was specifically limited to the relevant protected organization (i.e. Red Cross, IOC, IGOs). As such, it is out of scope for the IRT to itself debate, amend or add to the policy recommendation – this is made clear by the Principles & Guidelines for IRTs adopted by the GNSO Council in August 2016 (“The IRT is not a forum for opening or revisiting policy discussions. Where

issues emerge that may require possible policy discussion, these will be

escalated using the designated procedure … “: you can see the full text of the Principles & Guidelines at https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/irt-principles-guidelines-23aug16-en.pdf).

To the extent that the IRT believes there is a need to go back to the GNSO Council (e.g. for clarity as to the intention or scope of a policy recommendation or about a policy issue that arises during implementation), the designated procedure is as follows. The query should first be raised with the GNSO Council liaison to the IRT, who has the responsibility of ascertaining whether there is consensus within the IRT or agreement between the IRT and GDD staff on either the need for further guidance from the GNSO Council or on the question whether there is an issue that may require possible policy discussion (see Section V.E of the Principles & Guidelines).

We hope the information is helpful to the IRT as you continue your deliberations.

Thanks and cheers

Mary

From: <gnso-igo-ingo-ip-irt-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of Dennis Chang <dennis.chang@icann.org>
Date: Thursday, July 13, 2017 at 23:37
To: "gnso-igo-ingo-ip-irt@icann.org" <gnso-igo-ingo-ip-irt@icann.org>
Subject: [Gnso-igo-ingo-ip-irt] IGO&INGO Policy Implementation: Public comment analysis

Dear IGO/INGO IRT,

I am happy to report, that our IRT meeting today was tremendously productive. We managed to go through every comment in a 90-minute session. Attached is our analysis from today’s meeting for your refererence.

Here are a few resulting stats:

Changes to the policy language for clarification: 4

Additional implementation notes: 4

Addition to the FAQ: 3

Under further consideration: 1

The comment that the IRT asked to consider further is about exceptions procedure. In the attached analysis worksheet, it’s comment number 4.2-3 copied here for your convenience.

No	Section	Comments	from	Category	Summary	Analysis
4.2-3	4.2	"if a domain name, containing an exact match name from the Red Cross, IOC, and IGO Identifier List, is registered before this Consensus Policy effective date or before the label is added to the Red Cross, IOC and IGO Identifier List, the Registry Operator MUST permit renewal or transfer of the domain name. If a domain name, containing an exact match name from the Red Cross, IOC and IGO Identifier List, is registered before the label is added to the Red Cross, IOC and IGO Identifier List, and is subsequently deleted, the Registry Operator MUST withhold the domain name from registration or allocate the domain name to Registry Operator", is therefore a decent "mid-way" proposal to solve the topic of how to deal with existing registrations in gTLDs. However, it could be argued that it would be more fair if good faith, non-infringing registrations by those with legitimate rights should be allowed at any time as a matter of course, possibly with review and non-objection by the Red Cross, IOC or IGO entity.	IPC	Change to exceptions procedure	Exceptions procedure: it would be more fair if good faith, non-infringing registrations by those with legitimate rights should be allowed at any time as a matter of course, possibly with review and non-objection by the Red Cross, IOC or IGO entity.	no change requested; current position is no change as this was not the initial interpretation of the policy; However, IRT would like to consider further. send an email to IRT to solicit broader input and then conclude next week

Should the registration be allowed for non-(Red Cross, IOC, or IGO) organizations? Would this be in-line with the policy recommendation? If we did, how could this work?

If we do not allow this (as it is in our current plan,) would we not be in alignment with the policy recommendation?

The IRT members are invited to provide comments.

Thanks

Dennis Chang

p.s. As for the question, I’ve asked the IRT in earlier email (below), Crystal was kind to explain the reason for the request for the 12-month (rather than 6-month) for implementation.

As we expected, it was due to the assumption that there would be a new system with a new interface that registry operators have to work with – rather than the TMCH they already work with.

As the IRT is well aware, we have intentionally avoided any mention of TMCH to avoid any confusion that this policy had anything to do with Trademarks. I suppose it worked.

In any case, the IRT suggested that we provide and explanation in our summary report and 6-month duration would not be an issue.

From: <gnso-igo-ingo-ip-irt-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of Dennis Chang <dennis.chang@icann.org>
Date: Tuesday, July 11, 2017 at 5:47 PM
To: "gnso-igo-ingo-ip-irt@icann.org" <gnso-igo-ingo-ip-irt@icann.org>
Subject: [Gnso-igo-ingo-ip-irt] [question to IRT] IGO&INGO Policy Implementation: RySG comment requesting extended implementation time of 12-month (was 6-months)

Dear Registry Operator representatives of the IRT,

As you know, we’ve received comments from the RySG on 9 July 2017 and implementation team is working through the comments to understand the specific requests.

In the RySG comment, we note that the implementation time be extended from 6 months to 12 months.

“a. An implementation date of 1 February 2018 may not provide proper time for Registry Operators to prepare for new processes or integration with the INGO Claims System. However, the preferred approach is to leverage TMCH for Claims Services. Therefore, we recommend setting an implementation no earlier than 12 months from the approval of the specifications.”

We have discussed the 6-month implementation timeline during the drafting of the implementation plan and it was deemed adequate and therefore decided on the 1 Feb 2018 effective date with 1 August 2017 announcement. We are now trying to gain an understanding of need for the extended implementation duration.

Is the 12-months requested with the assumption that we will not be leveraging the TMCH claims service?

If the implementation plan is “the preferred approach to leverage TMCH,” would the 6-month duration be acceptable?

In light of the fact that we were advised some ROs did not want delays on this implementation, it would be helpful for us to have a good understanding for accepting this requested change from RySG.

We were going to reach out to RySG directly then realized that five of our own IRT are members of the RySG and could provide the rationale to us directly.

Please let us hear from you.

It would be good to have this answer prior to our IRT meeting to take a decision then.

—

Kind Regards,

Dennis S. Chang

GDD Services & Engagement Program Director

+1 213 293 7889

Skype: dennisSchang