22 Describe proposed measures for protection of geographic names at the second and other levels in the applied-for gTLD

Prototypical answer:

STAR INDIA PRIVATE LIMITED (SIPL) protects geographic names at the second level of .STAR at the highest level due to their single-registrant registry. This will done more explicitly by the following described measures. These have been developed in response to the GAC’s Principles regarding New gTLDs, dated March 28, 2007, and to adhere to the requirements of the ICANN Regis-try Agreement Specification 5.

In correspondence with GAC principle 2.7, SIPL will block all country and territory names as registrations under .STAR. To accomplish this SIPL will prior to launch (i) place the names on a reserved list that can solely be released as second-level registrations under .STAR by an agreement with the respective country or territory and with ICANN.

The names reserved as country and territory names will correspond to the requirements in the ICANN Registry Agreement Specification 5, paragraph 5; and paragraph 2 where all two-character labels will be reserved for registration to ensure that any release of such names is done to the appropriate corresponding country or territory and thereby avoid user confusion.

Concerning launching Internationalized Domain Names, SIPL will place translated versions of country and territory names on a reserved list that also only can be released for registration if an agreement has been reached with the corresponding country or territory and ICANN.

SIPL will implement dispute resolution policies to address dispute over any names not reserved by the above provisions; see response to question #28 and #29. In particular all domains are subject to the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), and to any properly-situated court proceeding. SIPL will ensure appropriate procedures to allow governments, public authorities or IGO’s to challenge abuses of names with national or geographic significance. SIPL will exercise right to suspend domains names in the event of a dispute. SIPL may exercise such right in the case of a dispute over a geographic name.

SIPL has no plans to release two-character, country, or territory name as second level registration under .STAR, but if such is contemplated in the future it will be done in agreement with the corresponding country or territory, ICANN. Further, in such case SIPL will define a procedure based on existing methodology developed for the release of country names in the current gTLDs. It will for example include a requirement for a written request from the country’s GAC representative, or a written request from the country’s relevant Ministry or Department.

Other GAC Principles regarding New gTLDs are defined elsewhere in this application, for example methods for limiting the need for defensive registrations in paragraph 2.9 is eliminated complete since the TLD will not be open for registrations, as described in response to question #18.

Similar gTLD applications: (1)