.nationwide

Status:	Proposed
Type:	Brand TLD
More information:

.nationwide is a Brand TLD being proposed in ICANN's New gTLD Program. The applicant is Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company.

Application Details

The following is excerpted from the applicant's response to question #18:

"Nationwide is a long-standing Fortune 500 company and a leading provider of domestic U.S. property and casualty insurance, life insurance and retirement savings, asset management, and strategic investments. Nationwide employs a mutual ownership structure which allows Nationwide to more effectively align its businesses with meeting the needs of our policyholders and customers, free of the influences exerted on publically-traded companies. Nationwide’s operating structure combined with the diversity of its businesses builds a solid foundation for a strong and stable company. As a result, Nationwide has grown to be one of the largest insurance and financial services companies in the world and today people know “Nationwide, Is on Your Side.” Indeed, Nationwide owns several trademarks in the United States and internationally for the NATIONWIDE service mark, namely, U.S. Reg. Nos. 0,854,888, 1,793,850, 2,017,147, 2,371,088, 3,328,956 and 3,328,989 for various insurance, financial, mortgage, and banking services.

Nationwide’s overall mission is to protect what is most important to the millions of policy-holders, contract holders, participants and beneficiaries. Indeed, Nationwide takes customer service seriously. As one of the largest insurance and financial services companies in the world, Nationwide knows that putting its customers first has allowed Nationwide to become the industry leader that it is today. Accordingly, Nationwide strives to create the best outcomes for its clients and customers with insurance and financial solutions that are secure, creative, and responsible.

In line with Nationwide’s general purpose and mission as described above, the purpose of the proposed gTLD (“the TLD”) is to further assist Nationwide in accomplishing its mission of providing the most secure online insurance and financial services to customers, clients, affiliates, and subsidiaries. In keeping with its mission to offer insurance and financial services in a safe, responsible, and consumer-driven manner, upon delegation of the TLD, Nationwide will initially conduct consumer and technical research to assess effective and safe ways for Nationwide to market its insurance and financial services to its consumers and to safely offer insurance and financial services by leveraging the new TLD. During this initial research period, Nationwide will not use the TLD to provide any information or services to the public, but reserves the right to use the TLD for internal purposes, including consumer and security-based testing of the TLD for later public use. If testing does not indicate that Nationwide can fulfill its mission with the TLD or it is clear that its customers will not robustly use the TLD, Nationwide reserves the right to continue to use the TLD for internal purposes only.

If testing shows that there is consumer demand for use of the TLD and that Nationwide’s services can be provided in a secure and useful manner, then Nationwide will consider using the TLD to promote Nationwide’s products and services, and to allow its customers to access policy information and transact insurance and financial business on websites under the TLD. If the use of the TLD expands in this way, Nationwide will consider and test the possibility of extending the use of domain names within the TLD to Nationwide’s Affiliates (as defined in Applicant’s registration policy below) to sell and distribute Nationwide’s goods and services, but will oversee and control such use at all times to ensure that all uses of the TLD stay consistent with Nationwide’s purpose and mission. At no time will Nationwide offer, sell, or lease domains in the TLD to other companies or third-party users not affiliated with Nationwide."

Top-Level Domain