Draft Applicant Guidebook

DAG is the acronym for Draft Applicant Guidebook. It is a guidebook of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) provided by ICANN to assist the potential new generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) applicants with several issues concerning the trademark holders and brand owners. Until 2010, ICANN has released four versions of DAG with the latest being released in June 2010.. ICANN had opened a public forum with a view to engage in a productive dialogue with the Internet community so that they can review the comments that will help them with the production of the new versions of the DAG.

Contents of the latest draft of DAG

The latest draft of the DAG has placed more importance to the community consultation and includes some major changes than the earlier two drafts which mostly are as follows:

• Incorporation of trademark protections, including enhancing the Trademark Clearinghouse (TM Clearinghouse), Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) and the Post-Delegation Dispute Resolution Proposal (PDDRP)
• Change of rules in the geographic TLDs, prohibiting the country names as gTLDs and a need to take permission from the national governments for applications for capital city names. However, there might be exceptions in case the city name is also a generic word
• A new gTLD Registry transition process model is provided for emergency transition under circumstances that there are prolonged Registry technical outages
• A model that provides centralized zone file access (ZFA) to assist in combating fraudulent conduct
• A revised base Registry agreement, a contract which future registries need to sign with ICANN. It consists of some new features such as:

1. Use of Emergency Registry transition provision for the protection of registrants in case there is any prolonged Registry technical outage
2. New ‘hybrid’ process for future amendments but only after consulting Registries and others concerned
3. New agreement for governmental as well as inter-governmental organizations (IGO) applicants formulated only after negotiations with Universal Postal Union (UPU) for .post. However, this is subject to modification depending on the circumstances of other similar organizations.
4. New provisions for the centralized registry zone file access (ZFA).
5. Registry-Registrar cross-ownership language – projected position pending the GNSO policy – development work

Some notable changes in the 3rd version of DAG

• A comprehensive background check on applicants, which includes checking issues such as corruption, bribery and terrorism issues coupled with intellectual property violations
• An enhanced role for public comment allowing comprehensive range of objections with respects to the proposed gTLDs coming from powerful interests
• New uses of gTLDs such as the .TEL require special permission from ICANN so that there is smooth functioning of the DNS

References

Generic Names Supporting Organization. Develops and recommends to the Board substantive policies relating to generic top-level domains and other responsibilities set forth in the Bylaws (ICANN Bylaws).