.charity to Famous Four based on PIC — Panelist awards

Panelist approves of Famous Four application for .charity while killing Donuts’ rival application.

A Public Interest Commitment for the .charity top level domain has resulted in Famous Four “winning” the contention set for the domain.

The Independent Objector (IO) filed community objections against both Famous Four’s and Donuts’ applications for .charity, along with Famous Four’s application for a Chinese equivalent.

The cases were consolidated, and the IO made the same claims in each case. But panelist Tim Portwood determined that the objections against Famous Four failed while the objection against Donuts prevailed.

Following submitting its applications, Famous Four submitted an additional Public Interest Commitment that would restrict registration to charities. So while Portwood determined that Donuts’ application would result in a likelihood of detriment to the “charity community,” he decided that delegating the domain name to Famous Four would not cause this detriment:

The eligibility policy defined by Applicant and inspired by the criteria of the UK Charities Act 2011 which will be included in any registration agreement entered into by Applicant with ICANN together with appropriate safeguards for registry operators respond in the Expert Panel’s view to the Detriment test concerns raised by the IO.

Famous Four thus avoids a costly resolution to the contention set, while Donuts pays the objection fees and loses much of its application fee.