[...] You can read its original request to ICANN here. [...]

[...] to be fair, one of the potential applicants for .sport wants ICANN to step in to prevent competitors such as [...]

[...] aural, or similarity of meaning”. You can expect some applicants to play hardball, such as .Sport Policy Advisory Council to object to applications for .basketball or [...]

As Anthony Van Couvering mentioned in your post, one of the goals is to be able to react in case some other applicant would deny our right to submit an application for .sport to ICANN by invoking trademark rights.

We have been working on our proposal since 2006. Ever since, we have heard of two other proposals for the same string, one being the subject of the original discussion. I guess it is easier to copy some else’s idea than to come up with something original. The last thing we would want is to see our application being challenged by some late comer with trademark claims to the string.

Adrian Kinderis appears to state above [post 12#] in reference to dotsport’s letter

“It has no creedance[sic] and ICANN will ignore it. Simple as that.”

So if ICANN chooses to ignore your advice do you think on balance it would be better to abandon all sport related TLDs including .sport rather than allow a proliferation of .football .fussball .soccer .nfl .fifa .olympics etc?.

This is the problem with formulating policy around trademark rights. All it does is create a race to acquire the “best” or “most” trademarks.

Policy should be driven by a desire to protect the underlying goods and services not the trademark itself.

Whilst it’s easy to formulate policy around trademark rights genuine mark holders will be the losers in the long run because those looking to game the system will simply acquire trademarks in the least onerous jurisdiction.