All,

As many of you already know, the Draft Final Report of the Subsequent Procedures PDP WG, covering a total of 41 topics, has been released for public comment, with the comment period closing on 30 September.

We have been diligently discussing selected topics at each CPWG Call for many months now, and in many cases, scorecards on the anticipated recommendations for various topics have been drawn up. While we continue with our discussions on CPWG Calls insofar as time permits, Topic 23: Closed Generics (otherwise known as Exclusive Generics) is one which has not yielded any recommendation from the Subsequent Procedures PDP WG because of a lack of agreement to-date.

As a result, the Draft Final Report portion concerning Topic 23 only summarizes the PDP WG deliberations, including ideas raised and discussed, and appends 3 proposals for comment.

Preamble

In the GAC Beijing Communique, GAC advised the Board that, "For strings representing generic terms, exclusive registry access should serve a public interest goal".
The Board's action in response, ultimately led to no exclusive generic gTLDs being delegated in the 2012 round.
SubPro PDP WG was to develop policy concerning Closed Generics / Exclusive Generics for subsequent procedures; i.e. under what circumstances should an application for a Closed Generic TLD be considered and/or what criteria should such an application carry (if at all) for the next round?
A Closed Generic / Exclusive Generic is a generic word string to be used exclusively by applicant; Note: a brand name that is not a generic word won't be considered as a Closed Generic.

Report Extract and Proposals

[0] Draft Final Report extract on Topic 23, pages 96-102
[1] A Proposal for Public Interest Closed Generic gTLDs (PICG TLDs), submitted by Alan Greenberg, Kathy Kleiman, George Sadowsky and Greg Shatan.
[2] The Case for Delegating Closed Generics, submitted by Kurt Pritz, Marc Trachtenberg, Mike Rodenbaugh.
[3] Closed Generics Proposal, submitted by Jeff Neuman in his individual capacity.

Action Required From You

Under what circumstances should an application for a Closed Generic TLD be considered and/or what criteria should such an application carry (if at all) for the next round? Please share your thoughts on and/or indicate if you favour/disfavour any element(s) in any of the 3 proposals [1], [2], and [3] above.

Next Steps

I hope to gain some early feedback to position a better informed discussion in a week's time.

Thanks,

Justine
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