Dear IRT Members,

I’m following up on our discussion from 27 August 2025 regarding a comment from the NCSG on “Criterion M.” from the Background Screening Criteria.

In our call on 27 August 2025, ICANN stated it would take another look at the comment and the AGB language. ICANN has now reviewed this and, because the substance of Criterion M is covered by the Applicant Onboarding Questions (Section 5.1.2.2) and because, as the NCSG noted, this was not a criterion in the 2012 AGB nor directly affirmed by SubPro Policy, we have removed this from the criteria (Section 5.1.2.1). ICANN had added it to align with the Onboarding questions, but because of the reasons above, we believe it was not necessary to add it there and believe the onboarding questions sufficiently cover concerns addressed by this criterion.

I would kindly request any additional feedback on this by Tuesday, 16 September.

References:

• Please refer to the slides and our discussion here: https://icann-community.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/SPIR/pages/432570369/2025-08-27+SubPro+IRT+Meeting+155a.
• Please refer to Module 5 here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15rbRj1dCzqflyowGj0BXs2GCebaqgFoy5osqc51LqoU/edit?tab=t.0 (see Section 5.1.2.1 and 5.1.2.2)
• “Criterion M: A final determination by a dispute resolution provider or a court of competent jurisdiction of intellectual property infringement relating to registration or use of a domain name by the applicant or any of the individuals named in the Organizational Account Record respectively, within the last 10 years.”

Thank you

Jared

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Jared Erwin

Senior Director, New gTLD Program

Global Domains & Strategy

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)

jared.erwin@icann.org