Dear all,

As noted in my previous email, please find below the responses from the Analysis Group to those questions that were raised by a few Working Group members (identified in parenthesis in the applicable questions) on the call that we did with the Analysis Group some weeks ago. Some of these responses have been shared with the Trademark Claims Sub Team as part of their mandate to identify additional data collection that may be needed.

Follow Up Questions from the Working Group Call with the Analysis Group:

1.       On page 9 of the Revised Report, it says the median TMs registered in the TMCH was 1. Can we get more detail in buckets? (e.g. # that registered 2-5, 6-10, 11-50, 51-100, etc.) (George Kirikos)

• We would be happy to provide this information, subject to a new/amended revised SOW with ICANN as this will entail some additional analysis.

2.       On page 9 of the Revised Report, the top 10 most popular strings (e.g. SMART, FOREX, HOTEL, etc) were listed. Can we get the top 500? (George Kirikos)

• Yes, we can provide this information under the new/amended revised SOW as this will entail a small amount of additional work.

3.       The Revised Report indicates in several areas that conclusions could not be reached because various parties failed to respond to requests from Analysis Group for additional data.  It would be great to receive additional context from Analysis Group on the specific requests it made, to whom, and any reasons given for failure to respond or provide the requested data. (question from Phil Marano)

i.            Registration attempt and abandonment rates outside the Claims Service Period

• Our data request was sent to a sample of registrars that offer registrations in the most popular new TLDs.
• We requested data on all new gTLD domain registration attempts: the attempted domain name (e.g., Domain.newTLD), the date of the registration attempt, and indication for whether a Claims Service notification was sent, and an indication of whether the registration was completed.
• We received data from one registrar.

ii.            Commercial Watch Services and Global Blocking Programs data

• To understand how these services interact with TMCH services, we would want to see which trademark holders are enrolled in commercial services, what services they use, how much they pay, and how this seems to affect their use of TMCH services (e.g., does it reduce their probability of making Sunrise registrations?).
• We did not request this information from commercial watch services or registries offering global blocking programs.

iii.            Sunrise registration price data

• Our data request was sent to a sample of registries who had shared general availability and (in some cases) Sunrise pricing data with us for AG's New gTLD reports.
• We requested data on Sunrise and general availability registration pricing.
• We did not receive enough responses to generate a meaningful sample of pricing data to conduct a comparison of Sunrise prices and general availability prices.

4.       If the registration application was abandoned, Analysis Group could not see the DOMAIN applied for, so there's no way of tracing duplicate pings, etc.? (question from Michael Graham)

• That is correct. If no registration was made, it is possible that multiple abandoned attempts were made to register the same domain.

5.       Do we know if a user who got a Claims Notice and abandoned their attempt to register then subsequently decided later to go back and register the domain despite the Claims Notice? (question from Kristine Dorrain)

• We cannot trace potential registrants in the data (for example, we do not have ISP addresses), so we're not able to identify return applicants.

6.       Are there data on abandonment of registrations where there is no Claims Notice (e.g. legacy TLDs)? Do we have any data on abandonment during the same periods for those starting the registration process but not receiving a Claims Notice? (question from Griffin Barnett)

• Data on abandonment outside of the Claims Period would be ideal (as listed above in the response to question #3), however we were not able to collect this data. We requested registration attempt and abandonment data from registrars, however, we only received data from one registrar. We do not have information on registration activity for legacy TLDs, but legacy TLD registration activity may not be a good comparable for registration activity in new gTLDs, since domains in legacy TLDs may have a different value to registrants than new gTLD domains. Legacy TLDs were also available at a different time than new gTLDs, and it is possible that registrant behavior has changed over time.

Thanks and cheers

Mary