Board Governance Committee to consider if application should move forward.
A lot of new top level domain name applicants have filed “Reconsideration Requests” after finding themselves on the losing end of objections.
They all have the same story: we were wronged, and we were wronged in a way unique to everyone else who has failed with their reconsideration request.
It was the same story I heard from .Med applicant Medistry (backed by Cleveland Clinic) when it filed their request for reconsideration.
But Medistry was right. It may have been wronged.
That’s the conclusion (pdf) of ICANN’s Board Governance Committee on Medistry’s request for reconsideration on a community objection against it.
The Independent Objector (IO) filed a community objection against Medistry’s .med application and won. Medistry then asked the board to overturn that decision.
The difference between Medistry’s reconsideration request and others is that Medistry argued that the IO wasn’t allowed to file a community objection in the first place.
Section 3.2.5 of the new TLD Applicant Guidebook states that in “light of the public interest goal noted above, the IO shall not object to an application unless at least one comment in opposition to the application is made in the public sphere.”
The IO interpreted a comment filed by National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) against Medistry’s application as an objection. It turns out it wasn’t objecting to the application. It was just cautioning that certain protective measure should be in place.
NABP has clarified that it wasn’t objecting. This makes sense: if .med is to go forward, you’d think that NABP would be in favor of an application backed by one of the United States’ most respected healthcare institutions (The Cleveland Clinic).
Medistry’s application doesn’t automatically move forward as a result of this decision. The Board “will ensure that a further evaluation be conducted as to whether the IO’s Community Objection (and by extension the resulting Expert Determination) was consistent with Section 3.2.5 of the Guidebook.”
If Medistry’s .med application moves forward, it will still be in a contention set with HEXAP SAS. The Independent Objector didn’t file a community objection against HEXAP’s application, presumably due in part to HEXAP filing as a community application.
Other applicants filing reconsideration requests shouldn’t get too hopeful that the door is open for them. Although this cased hinged somewhat on a Community Objection panelist’s opinion, it was more a question on if a case was eligible to be filed in the first place.
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