Peter Dengate Thrush
Peter Dengate Thrush is a barrister practicing in civil litigation and specializing in intellectual property, competition and Internet law.
He was the legal advisor to InternetNZ from 1996 to 1999, advising it on the formation of its registry company (Domainz) and acting in early domain name disputes in which the registry was named. He served as chair from December 1999 for two terms. He is a past chair of InternetNZ's International Affairs Committee, and a member of its Legal and Regulatory Committee (see www.internetnz.org.nz).
He has been active in the setting up and developing of APTLD, the body of national domain name registry managers for the Asia Pacific region, and is the immediate past chair (see www.aptld.org).
Peter has been involved in ICANN since its inception. As a member of the Boston Working Group, he provided comment in 1998 on the early drafts of the ICANN bylaws, and as President of AIPPI-NZ, he co-chaired one of the preformation meetings of the Intellectual Property Constituency in Wellington, New Zealand. In 1999 he was appointed to ICANN's Independent Review Advisory Committee, or IRAC, a multi-national panel of legal experts charged with defining the principles of independent review of the actions of the Board of ICANN. He contributed to InternetNZ's submission to WIPO 1 and served on ICANN's Working Group A, which led to the development of the UDRP. He is currently on the President’s Strategy, Board Finance, Board Governance and Executive committees.
He has been a leader of the ccTLD community, serving for many years on the Administrative Committee of the World Wide Alliance of ccTLDs. In that role he originated the call for the formation of a Support Organization for ccTLDs in ICANN and chaired the many meetings at which its bylaws were debated (see www.wwtld.org). He served on the launching group of the ccNSO and was selected as a board member after an international vote of ccTLD managers in the ccNSO in December 2004.
Peter Dengate Thrush was originally selected for the ICANN Board by the Country Code Names Supporting Organization in 2005. His current three-year term expires six months after the conclusion of the 2010 annual meeting.
Peter was first elected Chairman of the Board at the organizational meeting following the Annual General Meeting on 2 November 2007. He has been re-elected at the organizational meetings following the Annual General Meetings in 2008, 2009 and 2010.
