ICANN has posted the proposed final New gTLD registry agreement for comment. This agreement is incredibly important as it will define the relationship between New gTLD applicants, ICANN, registrars and registrants. This is the kind of information that domain resellers can use to their advantage, to educate their clients and to ensure they have the knowledge to speak authoritatively on their industry.
Initially, a revised agreement was presented on the 5th February 2013. With the feedback provided by the ICANN community after this, a final registry agreement has been created. A lot of this feedback was gathered at the ICANN meeting in Bejing, China 7th-11th April 2013.
ICANN Said:
“The proposed final agreement is the result of several months of negotiations, formal community feedback during a public comment forum initiated on 5 February 2013, and meetings with various stakeholders and communities.”
This agreement does not however, cover the issues raised by the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), in a recent communiqué.
Two areas of improvement highlighted by ICANN in their press release are:
1. Agreement Amendment Procedures – ‘… reworked to provide greater clarity and procedural safeguards’. There is also new negotiation procedures and the ‘provision for public comment’ relating to suggested amendments.
2. Confidentiality Provision – ‘A new confidentiality provision was inserted to ensure appropriate treatment of confidential information provided by a party to the other under the Agreement.’
3. Reserved Names – There would be a clarification of the reserved name agreement, including the requirements for such names. It is suggested that registries will be able to reserve up to 100 domain names 'for the operation or the promotion of the TLD’.
There are also smaller changes to the mediation of domain names and a switch from business days to calendar days in a lot of wording to provide greater clarity on timing. There is also a new section of the agreement relating to the newly created Trademark Clearing House.
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