Draft Applicant Guidebook

DAG, or Draft Applicant Guidebook, is a guidebook provided by ICANN to assist potential new generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) applicants with issues concerning trademark holders and brand owners. As of 2010, ICANN has released four versions of the DAG, with the latest version having been released in June 2010.. In order to improve the DAG, ICANN holds public, open forums, and the comments from these dialogues are often reviewed and incorporated into new versions.

Contents of the latest draft of DAG

The latest draft of the DAG has placed more importance on community consultation and includes some major changes. The current draft is 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).