.Hospital has been on life support since bad objection decision.
.Hospital was killed off after two of three panelists agreed with a Limited Public Interest Objection filed by the Independent Objector.
The panelists disregarded the guidelines and essentially created their own standard for if .hospital should be allowed or not, as I explained in December 2013.
For example, the two panelists railed against Donuts for wanting to run the domain name for commercial purposes. The panelists also focused more on possible content that could be hosted on .hospital domain names as opposed to the string itself.
The dissenting panelist in the objection wrote:
It is not the task of an expert panel to rewrite the application standards for gTLD strings and to supplement them with higher standards in the public interest. Rather, its task is limited to determining whether a specific applied-for string, taking into account its intended use as stated in the application is “contrary to generally accepted legal norms relating to morality and public order that are recognized under principles of international law.
Donuts asked ICANN to review the decision shortly after it was rendered.
There is some precedent for overturning an objection panel’s decision. In October 2014, the board agreed that two string confusion objections should get a do-over.
Donuts was the only applicant for .Hospital, so overturning the panel decision would not affect other applicants.
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