International Law Research
DRAFT - Final Legal Opinion on Sovereign Immunity for IGOs - 22 April 2016
Staff Briefing Note on Sovereign Immunity for IGOs - 12 Mar 2015
NAFO Canada Supreme Court decision
Questions sent to Hans Corell - 4 March 2015
Trademark Research
Policy staff conducted preliminary searches in several freely-accessible online databases provided by various national trademark offices. This was not a comprehensive search of all possible trademark protections obtained by all IGOs on the GAC List; rather, the intent was to obtain an initial sense of the nature and potential scope of certain national trademark protections for a selected number of IGOs from the GAC List.
The IGOs whose names and acronyms were searched for represent a sampling of IGOs across different sectors and geographies. They were selected from the GAC List (provided to ICANN) and are all organizations who have also submitted the requisite Article 6ter notifications for protection under the Paris Convention.
(NOTE: For the United Nations, protection seems to be limited to its name and not acronym; for UNICEF, protection seems to be for its acronym rather than its name.)
The national trademark databases were selected based on original research performed by ICANN's General Counsel for the prior IGO-INGO PDP Working Group, which indicated that of the jurisdictions it had surveyed, several did protect IGOs (notified pursuant to Article 6ter of the Paris Convention) via some specific mechanism in their national laws, such as assigning these IGO names and acronyms to specific serial numbers that would ensure that they will show up in a trademark search by third parties.
- Australia: IGO TM search results - Australia - 23 Dec 2014.xlsx
- USA: IGO TM search results - USA - 1 Jan 2015.xlsx
- List of the selected IGOs from the GAC List: Selected IGOs on GAC & 6ter lists