CircleID

A fourth draft of ICANN's New gTLD Draft Applicant Guidebook has been released.

In addition to the Applicant Guidebook, ICANN has also published summaries and analysis of the public comment period.

The latest version includes:

• Incorporation of trademark protections, including improvements to the Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS), the Trademark Clearinghouse (TM Clearinghouse), and the Post-Delegation Dispute Resolution Proposal (PDDRP);

• Changes to rules for geographic TLDs, including a prohibition on country names as gTLDs;

• A new gTLD Registry transition process model, including provisions for emergency transition in the case of prolonged Registry technical outages;

• A model for providing centralized zone file access (ZFA) to aid in combating malicious conduct;

• A revised base Registry agreement including proposed Registry-Registrar cross-ownership language.

The Public Comment Period for the fourth version of the New gTLD Draft Applicant Guidebook is now open and will run through July 21, 2010.

By Elisa Cooper, Director of Product Marketing at MarkMonitor. Elisa Cooper also contributes to the MarkMonitor weblog located here.

Related topics: DNS, Domain Names, Registry Services, ICANN, Internet Governance, Top-Level Domains