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Board/GAC Consultations

ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) provides public policy advice directly to the Board of Directors, providing an effective role for governments in ICANN’s governance model.

GAC representatives from Africa, the Americas, Asia Pacific, and Europe met with the Board in extended face-to-face discussions over a period of days during February and March of 2011 to identify specific differences between GAC advice and the current version of the Applicant Guidebook.

The purposes of the sessions were to promote joint understanding of the issues and arrive at an agreed-upon resolution of those differences wherever possible. Trademark issues, root zone scaling, and the handling of potentially objectionable TLD applications, among other issues, were discussed in depth.

After the discussions, ICANN’s Board responded to the GAC’s “Indicative Scorecard” on these issues, describing many areas of accommodation and agreement and also indicating those areas where the Board has not adopted GAC advice.

The most recent version of the Applicant Guidebook reflects a number of revisions resulting from the intensive collaboration between the GAC and the Board, including the strengthening of many trademark protections.
Below is a list of correspondence resulting from the Board/GAC consultations.