Jonathan C. Cohen  ended his four years of service on the Board of Directors of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) in June 2003.

Following Jonathan’s retirement from the Board, ICANN’s President, Dr. Paul Twomey asked Jonathan to chair the Joint Working Group for WIPO-2 Process Issues. The Appointment was formalized on October 6^th, 2003 and posted at www.icann.org.

The mandate of the Joint Working Group is to analyze the practical and technical aspects of implementing the WIPO-2 Process recommendations in a manner consistent with ICANN’s mission, and the implications for the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). 

WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) recently made recommendations to the ICANN Board concerning the protection of names and acronyms of International Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs) and the names of countries in the domain name system.  These recommendations followed an extensive international consultation conducted by WIPO (theWIPO-2 process) to evaluate whether procedures should be instituted to address domain-name issues arising in connection with various identifiers, including IGO names and country names.  Pursuant to a resolution of the ICANN Board in June, 2003, the Joint Working Group was established to study this issue and present its recommendations to the ICANN Board. 

The findings and recommendations of this Working Group will be of considerable significance to the international intellectual property community as well as all users of the Internet in general.

Among the Working Group’s members are:

1)  Representatives of ICANN’s Generic Names Supporting Organization (which represents the interests of the major Internet stakeholder groups through its various constituencies, including the Intellectual Property Constituency),

2)  Representatives from the Government Advisory Committee (representatives of 6 national governments) and;

3)  Representatives from the At-Large Advisory Committee. (representing Academia and non-commercial interests)

Comments from interested persons would be gratefully received by Mr. Cohen at his e-mail address jcohen@shapirocohen.com or at the committee’s address for e-mail, namely wipo2agf@icann.org.