18(a) Describe the mission/purpose of your proposed gTLD

Prototypical answer:

18.1 Mission and Purpose of .GIFTS

Lucy Ventures, LLC (“Lucy Ventures”) has filed this application for the .GIFTS gTLD with the intention of bringing to market a trusted, hierarchical, and intuitive namespace for consumers looking for gift products, services, tips, and ideas.

The intended future mission and purpose of the .GIFTS gTLD is to serve as a trusted, hierarchical, and intuitive online marketplace for gift-related products, services, and information for consumers looking for gift products, services, tips, and ideas. It is envisioned that registrants of .GIFTS will consist of large retailers, corporations, small businesses, non-profits, industry associations, entrepreneurs, and other third parties that provide or plan to provide an online platform for consumers to purchase and access gift related products, services, and information.

18.1.1 Potential Business Models

The .GIFTS gTLD is intended to be one of the new generic-term gTLDs, with the goal of providing a trusted, hierarchical, and intuitive online marketplace for gift-related products, services, and information. As technologies for delivering content, goods, and services evolve, Lucy Ventures will continue to pursue and explore opportunities to enable partners, businesses, and other third parties to distribute gift-related goods, services, and information. Lucy Ventures believes that the .GIFTS gTLD has the potential to provide a virtual platform for registrants to deepen and broaden their relationships with new and existing consumers.

The business model for the .GIFTS gTLD is broken into two stages. The two stages are as follows:

1. Allocated Registry Strings
At the current stage of analysis, the business model for .GIFTS is one in which generic strings (“Holiday,” “Anniversary,” “Birthday,” etc.) and geographic (city⁄state) domain names would initially be reserved and⁄or allocated to Lucy Ventures. These domain names would provide a model for a hierarchical and intuitive framework and naming system for consumers to more easily navigate the .GIFTS namespace. This initial use will provide Lucy Ventures’ IT and security personnel the time to run a number of tests to ensure seamless and secure access using the .GIFTS gTLD domain names, and interoperability with various software and Web-based applications. This initial allocation will also allow Lucy Ventures’ registry staff responsible for the delegation and setup phases of the .GIFTS gTLD to ensure a proper transition from delegation to full operation. This initial phase is reasonably necessary for the purpose of the gTLD, detailed in the response to Question 18 of this application, as set forth per the terms of Specification 9 in the template Registry Agreement. These names will be registered and paid for by Lucy Ventures.

At the time of completing this application, Lucy Ventures has identified a Rights Protection Mechanism (“RPM”) that will allow trademark owners to challenge domain names initially reserved by the registry. This process will likely be modeled after the dotAsia Pioneer Policies adopted by dotAsia in connection with its launch, see http:⁄⁄www.wipo.int⁄amc⁄en⁄domains⁄gtld⁄asia⁄.

2. General Registration
After the initial allocation of domain names, Lucy Ventures aims to vet the potential registrant pool to ensure that .GIFTS will be a trusted namespace for gift-related products, services, and information. It is currently envisioned that only those entities providing or those with a bona-fide intent to provide gift-related goods, services, and information will be able to register domains in the .GIFTS gTLD.

There will be a general Sunrise Period, as described in the Registry Agreement, followed by a land rush period for the general sale of domain names in the .GIFTS registry.

Names will be available for sale through ICANN-accredited retail registrars and will be available for purchase and use by any business owner seeking to post content in the .GIFTS namespace. In addition to this general sale of names through registrars, Lucy Ventures will also reserve for sale and auction premium names in order to receive the higher yearly registration prices that the market will bear for these premium names. Revenues received from both the general sale domains as well as the premium names are included in the Financial Projections Template attached to the response to Question 46.

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