UNCLASSIFIED The Australian Government issued an Early Warning to Lifestyle Domain Holdings, Inc on the grounds that 'food' is a common generic term, and that restricting common generic strings, such as .food, for the exclusive use of a single entity could have a negative impact on competition. The GAC subsequently advised in its Beijing Communique of April 2013 that for strings representing generic terms, exclusive registry access should serve a public interest goal. The Australian Government does not consider that Lifestyle Domain Holdings' application to operate .food for its exclusive use serves a public interest goal. According to Specification 13 section 9.1, .Brand TLDs are TLDs where the TLD is not a Generic String TLD (as defined in Specification 11). Specification 11 section 3.d states that ' "Generic String" means a string consisting of a word or term that denominates or describes a general class of goods, services, groups, organizations or things, as opposed to distinguishing a specific brand of goods, services, groups, organizations or things from those of others.' On this basis, and as 'food' would denominate or describe a general class of food goods or services we consider that .food does not meet the criteria for a .brand TLD. Regards, Annaliese Williams Australian Government GAC representative ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message. This message has been content scanned by the Axway MailGate. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------