Eric, This is very interesting, I am not sure the Review Group was aware of all these historical details. Are your saying that the WHO previously applied for an paid an underfunded application fee for the .HEALTH string? I found this document in the ICANN archives: http://archive.icann.org/en/tlds/report/health1.html and this one:http://archive.icann.org/en/tlds/health1/WHO-C-SO-Proposal.htm Please, clarify. Did ICANN solicit these applications and did they request an application fee which was not returned when they were not approved? And now ICANN is accepting application fees for the same string? -Garth On 3/5/13 10:27 PM, Eric Brunner-Williams wrote:
On 3/5/13 3:33 PM, Garth Bruen wrote:
The region must answer a series of questions (one for each applicant) in response to the .HEALTH objection: https://community.icann.org/display/newgtldrg/Advice+from+the+RALOs+to+the+A LAC+regarding+the+objection+statements
My recommendation is to answer "NO" or to abstain in ALL FIVE cases and I will explain why.
My recommendation is to answer "YES" to ALL FIVE cases.
I spent some of my Toronto meeting time in consultations with Dr. Joan Dzenowagis, of the World Health Organization, who worked with CORE in submitting an application for a sponsored TLD in 2000, and Ms. Rosa Delgado, whom I've known since the 2000 round, when she represented the interests of the .aero applicant, and who was, and is, consulting for the World Health Organization.
I am convinced that (a) ICANN has not extinguished the WHO's interest in the label ".health", arising from the WHO's submitting a qualified, and deferred, application in the 2000 round. For those who were not a part of Working Group C, in 1998-2000 the majority proposal was to accept 7 to 10 of the applications, split evenly between the sponsored form and the open form. Seven applications were selected, the .health application was one of those deferred until a future date.
I appreciate that staff legal asserts that it has unilaterally extinguished all prior applicants' interests, and that long running claim for .web has finally resulted in a court ruling adverse to the claim of that applicant, but the general claim of unilateral extinguishment of all prior applicant's interests in their qualified, but deferred applications, has not yet been tested in a court of law.
I would not like to see ICANN profit by "efficient breach" of contract with the World Health Organization, return to it $45,000, in cash or in future application fee credit, with interest, and taking the auction price from the highest speculative interest bidder. Not only would this be poor past contract management, there is no reason to believe that ICANN would refrain from similar conduct in the present, or future rounds. When registrars do this to individuals and business that attempt to register a name of value, we call it "front running", and condemn the practice. If ICANN can "front run" the World Health Organization, taking its 2000 round application for the string "health" and award it to the highest bidder in 2013 (or 2014, or ...), it can "front run" other public interest applicants and privatize the assets those public entities have created in common identifiers.
I am also convinced that (b) the underlying purpose of marks protections, articulated in part by national law, and subsequent treaty based international law, concerning trademarks, is the prevention of harmful confusion in the market, and the difference between a registry operated by the World Health Organization and a registry operated by any for-profit operator seems to me to be self-evident. Having worked diligently, first with Jon Postel, then with members of the Intellectual Property Constituency, for two decades, to protect the interest of public bodies -- initially indigenous governments in the Americas and Oceania, now these and municipalities and regional governments and treaty organizations which do not rely upon trademark to protect their name from expropriation by third parties pursuing private profit, I am certain that snipping off the valuable bits of public identifiers and selling them to the highest bidder will only produce harmful confusion in the market. It is not surprising that we see multiple speculative claims for "health" and none for "world" or "organization" or "worldhealth" or "healthorganization". That's where the public reliance is, and therefore that is where there is money to be had by first mover theft.
Having worked with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Information in the past, and having maintained a relationship with senior members of each subsequently, I'm certain that whatever Mike Rodenbach is up to is unlikely to be consistent with the public interest in public health in the Han Script market of ideas and names. Mike has always struck me as one of the least intelligent, and least principled persons to have ever been on the GNSO Council.
I appreciate the concern that Garth expresses, and the invitation to disagree or engage in discussion, however, as we know different things, and I knew the .health applicant team in 2000, worked with the individuals associated with the then proposed technical provider (CORE) while Chief Technical Officer of CORE, 2007-2010, and am well acquainted with Dr. Joan Dzenowagis and Ms. Rosa DelGado, I know that the objection to the string does not "represent a narrow interest in the string itself and not the meaning", but is an objection to both.
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