Brussels, 05/02/2014 (Agence Europe) - The battle between the European Union and the United States is continuing over the use of internet domain names .vin and .wine. The disagreement arose in late November 2013 at the last ICANN meeting (the US body that manages domain names). This week, ICANN was sent a number of letters expressing the diametrically opposed views of the various protagonists. In a letter on 30 January, the United States calls for unconditional issuing of domain names, whereas the EU and its member states, in a letter on 3 February, call for guarantees of the protection of indications of geographical indications (GI), which it views as vital.
In its letter, the European Union points out the existence of international agreements on the protection of intellectual property rights, including GI, and says that ICANN is overstepping its powers by allowing unconditional allocation of domain names. The EU says that, if agreement is not reached by companies requesting the domain names and the wine industry, it will call for the dropping of the .vin and .wine domain names because of the damage they could cause for producers and consumers around the world if their allocation exceeded the benefits that would be generated by them by the companies that distribute domain names. Riccardo Ricci Curbastro, head of the Fédération Européenne des Vins d'Origine (EFOW), is unhappy with the United States' intransigence. He says that the internet is not a no-rights zone and all interests have to be taken into account, including respect for intellectual property rights. He said that, in this battle, the EU was defending all GI producers, including the American ones. He also regretted the slow pace of talks with the candidate companies, especially given the reasonable and easily applicable nature of the EU demands from the technical viewpoint.
The controversy arose when ICANN started to allow the issuing of new first-level generic domain names in addition to the usual ones (.eu, .com, etc). The new domain names include .vin and .wine. Three companies have applied to issue and manage the new .wine domain name and one company the .vin name. Europe fears that the companies, which are not connected with wine-making in any way, are only motivated by the desire to make profit and will flout EU rules governing the protection of GI by selling second-level domain names at auction (rioja.wine or bordeaux.vin, for example) to bodies having no connection with the regions in question. There are therefore huge risks of deception of consumers over products and the auctioning of counterfeit wine if protection is not introduced, not to mention the loss of good names for operators in the wine regions in question (see EUROPE 10924). At the moment, both sides are refusing to budge and talks are in deadlock. The only way out is to hold talk with the companies applying to manage the domain names. The next meeting of ICANN's government advisory board (GAC) is scheduled in Singapore on 23 to 27 March. (IL/transl.fl)