Brussels, 06/09/2013 (Agence Europe) - The wine-making sector and the candidate companies which sell domain names have failed to reach agreement over the use of the domain names “.vin” and “.wine” on the internet. The European Commission is looking into the dossier in order to ensure that European and international legislation on the protection of geographical indications is respected.
As no agreement could be reached between the wine-making sector and the three companies over the “.vin” and “.wine” strings, the European Federation of Origin Wines (EFOW) has written to the board of ICANN, the American body which deals with these issues, to ask for the allocation of these domain names to be suspended until the parties have reached a solution.
The wine producers “continue to threaten to boycott the strings and to take legal action”, the EFOW warns.
Respecting the rules to protect geographical indications
Responding to the concerns expressed by members of the European Parliament, Neelie Kroes, the European Commissioner responsible for the digital strategy, said in a letter dated 27 August that the Commission wished to promote a solution which would make it possible to use the “.vin” and “.wine” strings “with adequate safeguards” and “in line with EU and international legislation on geographical indications (including bilateral agreements)”. For this reason, she explained, “my services have sent a note to the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) of ICANN outlining the EU's legal argument” in order to obtain “solid guarantees”. “We are also working with other members of the GAC (Latin America) which are particularly concerned by the wine market”, she added, explaining that the Commission will attempt to pursue negotiations in September within this organisation.
Dacian Ciolos, European Commissioner for Agriculture, is keeping a close eye on the matter. He has discussed it with other commissioners with direct involvement (Kroes and Michel Barnier) in order to “analyse all options open to the Commission to try to avoid this kind of problem”. On Thursday 5 September, he told a group of journalists that the geographical indication mechanism is not yet recognised throughout the world, hence this kind of row. “The use of the '.vin' and '.wine' strings should take account of the fact that the EU has a system of geographical indications which protects intellectual copyright. This is valid at home, it is not recognised everywhere, and therefore we need to find diplomatic and legal instruments to allow us to defend our interests (those of our producers)”, Ciolos concluded. (LC/transl.fl)