KK, One of the things that was clear from earlier NCSG (primarily NCUC) discussion on this issue is that there is a clear majority of us who think that whatever the merits of the two cases, they are completely separate cases and need to be dealt with separately. Therefore the questions as they stand are unanswerable, except for answers which throw out any and all protections for the two sets of strings. I think that as a matter of process you should be pushing hard for the results not to be pre-judged to be the same for the two sets of strings. My personal position is that although I don't like it, ICANN following the international treaties governing the red cross/crescent/star (a smaller group that keeps being missed - as a Bright I'm not happy that this major international organisation is identified on religious symbolic grounds but that's a separate issue) and disallowing registration at the top level for precisely those strings limited by the relevant treaties is just about acceptable. The Olympics only protects the graphical symbol and not the strings and should not be given any special treatment, particularly given the mass of existing domain names which make perfectly legitimate use of the relevant strings. Why on earth would the Japanese company Olympus, for example, be barred from using their long-established global brand name as a TLD to go with olympus.com (which redirects to www.olympus-global.com at present)? -- Professor Andrew A Adams [log in to unmask] Professor at Graduate School of Business Administration, and Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan http://www.a-cubed.info/