ICANN Brussels Brand Management in the Age of New gTLDs Wednesday, 23 June 2010 >>KURT PRITZ: Hi, everybody. We'd like to start in just one minute. Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Kurt Pritz. I'm a member of the ICANN staff. I want to thank you for coming here today, which we -- to what we think will be a great session, and taking your time late in an afternoon and missing, I think, for most of you not watching the soccer match. We're here for a very interesting purpose. Kristina, if we could have the first slide. That's great. So you'll forgive me for saying, and by prefacing this with anticipating the nearly imminent launch of the new gTLD program, what measures should brand owners take to protect their trademarks leading up to the -- leading up to the launch of the new gTLD process and then, you know, what measures should they take in the case of the launch of each individual new TLD. There's a variety of new protections offered with the introduction of new gTLDs. And the panelists here have discussed those in depth, helped developed them, have an understanding of their strengths and weaknesses. And I think one of the reasons we're here is to provide advice as to how they may be best used and maybe offer some tweaks here as we get near to the end. So if I can have the next slide. I think one of the victories of this new gTLD process for the ICANN community has been the collaboration of the ICANN community, different stakeholder groups, in developing solutions for very difficult problems. And the intellectual property constituency of ICANN -- this happened so long ago, it was called the intellectual property constituency, and now it's called the intellectual property stakeholder group -- came together to start with, essentially, a blank sheet of paper and develop a recommended set of rights protection mechanisms for the applicant guidebook. And this is just one of many cross-functional, cross-stakeholder group teams that formed in a very short period of time to solve very difficult problems. And this slide just indicates the time line since the ICANN board approved the policy to launch the process. The blue squares are the many teams that have come together to work on solutions to implementation problem. I think it's a success of the ICANN model. Can I have the next slide. So the goal of all of those teams is to create an environment that is safer, more friendly to registrants, promotes competition, but also provides protection in an improved environment over what exists now. And one mapping of this or one mapping of the increased protections for trademark holders -- and, you know, trademarks are protected not just for the trademark holders. They're intended to protect the public, too -- are the increased number of rights protection mechanisms. So for -- there's protections at the top level, additional protections at the top level for gTLD names, such as the post-delegation dispute mechanism, doing background checks of potential applicants, the legal rights objection. And then at the second level, the new mechanisms include the new Uniform Rapid Suspension mechanism, the trademark clearinghouse which is used to support both the sunrise and I.P. claims process, and then thick WHOIS. So I think that these -- the people on this panel and others came together and created this set of protections, and now we want to talk about how we might best utilize them, what the strengths and weaknesses of them are, so as we go into the launch of new gTLDs, we're all armed with the best set of protections we can derive. So with that, with the -- the easy stuff's over and now I'm going to turn this meeting over to Nick Wood, who I'm very honored to have here. He and I have become pretty darned good friends through this, I think so, anyway. He's the managing director of Cum Laude. >>NICK WOOD: This session is about looking forward. You might not be actually looking forward to the new gTLDs, but I want us to look forward. There's been a lot of looking back, and this session is not about the looking back. We could dive right down into the murky details of should the IRT have had a travel grant or the use of capitalization in the STI report. We could do all of that. But that would be wasting the somewhat considerable talents that we have on the panel today. So let me introduce you to them, and then we're going to go a little bit further. And what we're going to try to do is to run through the process as it's mapped out. So we're going to talk a little bit about what brand specialists are looking to do in the period from now until the day that a list of applied full strings is published. And then we're going to look a little bit at what to do just after the list of strings are published. And then we're going to look maybe three or five years in advance. There's going to be loads and loads of time for you guys to ask questions as we go through this. I suppose that these microphones are working. So please come along, because I should say that the session, I think, is being recorded. There's a chat room. There will be a transcript published afterwards. So if you do come to the front, please carefully, clearly say who you are and the organization that you represent. Because when I go back through these things sometimes, it's really frustrating not quite to be able to get the name of the person. Okay. So let me introduce you to the panel. And I'm going to lean right out here so I can see at the far end, Debbie Hughes. I'm going to make sure I get everyone's title right. Debra is the senior counsel for the American Red Cross international treaty organization. Next to Debra is a complete ICANN newbie. He's never been here before. And he has been a little bit puzzled by some of the acronyms. And we suggested that if anyone's got any really detailed questions about DAG 4, then he's going to be the person to take first chance at it. His name is Richard Waterhouse. He's the chief executive of the Royal Institute of British Architects Enterprises Division. And that's a cash-making business. Next to Richard, we have Susan Payne. Now, Susan used to be the brand protection manager of BBC Worldwide. But because she didn't have anything else to do, she's now really assumed full responsibility for the BBC's brand protection all in all. Next to -- next to Sue, we have Charlotte Walters with Orange. She is a legal advisor with Orange. Are you all familiar with Orange? Think of a telecoms company and then double it. That's what Orange is a big telecoms company. We have Kristina Rosette, she is the special counsel from Covington & burling. She will be very familiar to you because she is one of the IPC represents to the GNSO. We'll tell you a little bit later what that means, Richard. She's been intimately involved in the rights protection mechanisms. But she also advises large corporates. Next to Kristina Rosette, we have Caroline Perriard from Nestle. Nestle is the world's largest food company. And Caroline is the brand I.P. counsel. And then, finally, sitting next to me here is David Taylor, who's a partner at Hogan Lovells and also a represent on the GNSO, and also spends most of his work advising large corporates. So there's a weakness about what we're going to talk about today. It's pretty much that it's a big brand point of view. We thought about trying to find some smaller brands to come in. But one of the things that may come up today is the fact that the application fee is $185,000. So we're not sure at the moment how many smaller brands will be going for this. Okay. So let's begin. Can we just click through. Here's a slide of Canon. A lot of you know that Canon announced, somewhat optimistically back in March of this year that they're going to be applying for a new gTLD. They said they're beginning the acquisition process. So what did they mean by that? What are the benefits that they perceive? Can I have the next slide, please. This is what they said. Now, you can all read it. But I'm going to whip through it quite quickly, because there are people in the -- people who are listening to a transcript only. They said, we feel it will enable us to consistently provide high reliability and high quality, the expression of brand quality, within the world of online communications. They said, "Utilizing Web addresses such as product name.Canon, servicename.Canon, and specific-message.Canon, which do not require additional characters such as dot com or dot net or country-specific two-character codes would enable us to convey our brand in a straightforward fashion. This would support the effective deployment and utilization of cross-media marketing." And they said, perhaps somewhat optimistically, customers will arrive at their intended destinations without having to rely on the use of a search engine. And I should just add that the interviews were undertaken by a reporter from managing intellectual property's new online bulletin, who may, indeed, be in the room. Is he here? Are you here, Finn? No, not here, because we could have tried to pin him down on anything else that they said. Okay. Can I have the next slide, please? Thank you. So Canon, I think, in summary they said, "We feel that a new gTLD will play an indispensable role amid the major changes to occur in brand communications." An indispensable role. So the first question to the panel is about the extent to which they agree with that statement. Is it right? We'll come back to all of you later. Caroline, can you begin by telling us a little bit about your work with Nestle, and then give us your view to this question. And before we go into that, I should just say -- and this is a kind of standard -- standardized ICANN disclaimer -- everyone here is speaking in their individual capacity. So if you want to rush out and report it, come up and talk to them first. They're speaking individual capacity, not on behalf of their companies. >>CAROLINE PERRIARD: Thank you, Nick. Yes, three points, actually, I would like to bring up this afternoon regarding the need of the gTLDs and why a big company would be interested in them. We've been talking for it for a while. And then there were three, let's say, main advantages that were brought to the brand owners. The first one was that you can have your entire communication under one single extension. It's great. You just have dot -- for example, dot Canon. Well, this is okay if you have one main brand. But if you have several brands, first, you have brands that are not sold under the company name, so you cannot link them in your communication. Or maybe you don't want to link them. Then you have brands that you license or you have joint ventures. You are not always selling your products under one same brand. And for a company like Nestle, we have about 5,000 brands. They are not all linked to Nestle. And we don't want, for example, to mix pet food with human food. So it's not the biggest solution on earth if you really want to put on a domain name strategy. And, of course, we have different countries, and you have to tackle the sensibility of the company name in the different countries. So going worldwide is really difficult. The second point was that this is great, you will be able to get rid of your ccTLDs and the major gTLDs in two years' time. Nice. But if you sell your company -- and I'm taking another example of Kraft and Cadbury. You know Kraft Food is a big chocolate or confectionary company. They bought Cadbury. What if Cadbury had an extension dot Cadbury? They do a lot of promotion, ten years, 20 years under dot Cadbury. Suddenly, they sold to somebody else. They have to start all over. Is that the solution? The third thing is the generic name. People came, and someone said, "This is great. You can really target your field, your topic where you're working on." I'm sure many of you have a Nesquik drink in the morning. You mix the Nesquik powder with milk. Okay. Are you going to go for dot milk? Dot beverages? Dot food? Dot nutrition? And then if you speak Spanish, what do you look for? So at the end of the day, we have so many possibilities, I'm not so sure it will really help the brand owners. And another thing I would like to say, and it was a question I discussed with Nick, when is the good time to go on with a gTLD? I mean, a new gTLD like a dot brand? This is really difficult to assess at this point, because we don't know how the users will look at it, if they will really find this is the solution. Like, I want my Nesquik drink and I want to know what is inside, so I go to dot food, or go to Google and Yahoo! and search for it. So there are so much questions we have, and I don't have the answer to that. But that is probably why we are here and we are trying to tackle some issues before the launch of the new gTLDs. >>NICK WOOD: You may. >> So -- >>NICK WOOD: You need to get to the microphone. >> My name is John Berard. I'm a consultant in San Francisco. It's just me and my computer. What's the difference between dot Canon and Canon.com? I mean, you're investing a fair bit of emotional value into the names you have. And then if you're a public company, wouldn't it be good to be able to link various products so as to create more corporate or perhaps share price synergy? >>CAROLINE PERRIARD: Yeah, it could be. It could be. But it's a strategy. And maybe it's a strategy you once want to take. But maybe not all of them. And I think it's why it's difficult to really assess whether it's good to have it or not. It might be good for some companies and not for others. But I don't think -- personally, I don't think in 20 years we just will have dot something. >>NICK WOOD: Thanks, Caroline. So you've got a view that you are definitely not decided yet, and you can still see a lot of issues in front of you. Richard, can I ask you, can you tell us a bit about your work at the RIBA and your views. Could a gTLD enhance your brand? Could it become indispensable to you? >>RICHARD WATERHOUSE: Thanks, Nick. Firstly, thanks for inviting me here. I find myself in a bit of a bear pit, because I don't really know much of the detail about how this works. Our points of view comes purely from how we face the market, how we can help the consumer. The RIBA is the Royal Institute of British Architects. It is both a membership organization, with membership mainly in the U.K., but around 6,000 architects around the world. It's also a charity. One of the things we have been trying to do is to focus our activity on improving the built environment and showing how architects in particular help improve the built environment. One of the ways we've been doing that is to build the brand, to reinforce the quality that goes alongside the RIBA. And something like the gTLD program, I think for us is both a threat, but also an opportunity. I think it will help us to promote architects and also to maximize the brand strength we can have through this I.T. movement. In the U.K. and in a number of other countries, the title "architect" is protected by law. And we're looking for ways to reinforce that protection. How can we give consumers the -- the strength of knowledge that when they're working with an organization, they are suitably accredited, in this case, through the architect's registration board in the U.K.? And we can use your brand on something like dot RIBA to actually give some consumer protection. That's the strength that we can add through this particular program. It will allow us to promote not just architects, but also the activities of the RIBA, which are many and varied. It will also promote individuals, as well as companies, something that has been a challenge to us. And also provide us with some commercial gain, I hope. And that's something that we'll maybe talk about a little later on today. But one of the difficulties for the RIBA has to be something Nick has already mentioned, which is the price of the application. It is a sensible thing in terms of barrier to stop any silly applications. But for organizations like ourselves, as a charity, it does cause us problems. >>NICK WOOD: Thanks, Richard. David, you work for a large international law firm. How are lawyers looking at this? >>DAVID TAYLOR: Thanks, Nick. When I was just thinking about how to reply to this, I was looking at my BlackBerry, because I had a quote which I wrote down quite a few years ago about there being three types of people: People who make things happen, people who follow what happens, and people who wonder what happened. And I thought that was quite appropriate, because that does seem to summarize, in a nutshell, what a lot of brand owners are going through. So, I mean, certainly in my experience, looking at this, we do a lot of domain name work, we're doing quite a bit of strategic advice to clients. Many of them are still completely unaware of what's going on. I think that comes through time and time again. If you actually look at the comments that are filed on the DAG version 2, Version 3, et cetera, there's very few brand owners there commenting, and there's a heck of a lot of brand owners across the world. So a large proportion still are completely unaware of what's going on. Those that are aware, many of those are very scared about what this -- this can mean. Richard there mentioned there is obviously the opportunity, but it's this fear of potential cybersquatting coming through. Some of them just don't care whatsoever. We have spoken to quite a few people, and they really just don't care about what's going on. It does not mean anything to them at this point in time. And then some are really thinking about it. They are thinking about it and they're thinking about how they can use it and how they can make use of this potential opportunity. So that's the main things. And I think one comment in addition there is that cost always comes up. And it's one of the first things a brand owner says, is they say it's $185,000. This is ridiculous. These domain names cost $10, don't they. And you try and explain what's involved in the $185,000. But I sort of come back to the idea that if you look at Toys R Us and they bought toys.com for $5.1 million, so if they're willing to buy toys.com for $5.1 million, I'm guessing -- and I have no idea -- that they might well have $185,000 up their pocket to go for dot toys. But that raises many issues. >>NICK WOOD: Thanks, David. Could I have the next slide, please. Okay. Let's suppose that the guidebook has been published and the evaluation questions are out there in the registry operator's contract. Then, Sue, you kind of live and breathe all of this brand protection stuff, I know. Can you tell us something of what your role is and the messages you're communicating to your colleagues about the new gTLD program. >>SUSAN PAYNE: Yes. I'm a trademark lawyer at the BBC. Formerly, I was the brand protection manager at the BBC's commercial subsidiary, BBC Worldwide. So I've been living and breathing this for a good couple of years or so. First to introduce the company, in case people don't know, the BBC's the U.K.'s public service broadcaster. So it's publicly funded by, basically, the U.K. public, who pay a license fee. We operate radio and TV channels. We've got an online platform on BBC.CO.UK, and BBC.com. We're a maker of programs and exporter of programs overseas. Through group companies and licensees, we make DVDs, books, magazines, licensed merchandise relating to our programs. So somewhat similar to Nestle, really. We've got the issue of numerous brands. There's not, you know, one single brand that we're looking to protect. So that in, for example, the trademark space, we'll have trademarks for, you know, our obviously core brands, but also channel brands, services like "BBC News," BBC iPlayer, program names like "Top Gear," "Dr. Who," "Dancing with the Stars," "Teletubbies." And then even sort of characters or locations within programs, like the dialects from "Dr. Who" or the steak from "Top Gear." And, basically, you know, in order to just protected those trademarks, we have to sort of a wide portfolio of brands. We've got 800 unique marks in more than 100 countries. Similarly on the domain name side, we've got, give or take, sort of 4,000 or so domain names, the vast majority of which are defensive and we're not using. And I would say that's probably in line with many other brand owners. So in terms of the sort of new gTLD process, from my point of view, there's sort of two decisions, really, the first is to register or not to register a gTLD. And that could either be dot generic brand, so a sort of industry term or something, or dot brand. And then separately -- and these are not necessarily mutually exclusive -- is then what do you do about the individual platforms which launch the various new gTLDs that other people will be launching? And to what extent are you going to register domain names within those? And, really, my role in the runup is to work with my colleagues in the company to come up with an internal strategy that we can get agreed at the appropriate level, which basically means consulting with relevant people in various parts of the business, say sort of marketing strategy, online exploitation, that kind of thing. My experience has been that the first challenge is actually getting people to engage in the first place. It makes people I've been working it kind of glaze over when you mention the term domain name. I've been sending documents and e-mails, maybe send a ten-page briefing paper which you summary in a single-page e-mail and you get a response saying, can you summarize this in a paragraph for me because I don't want to read it. So, really, the first challenge is getting people in a room so that you can talk to them and explain to them what this means, because it's quite a complicated issue to distill down into a paragraph. And basically, you know, working with people to come up with an agreed strategy and get it approved at the appropriate level in the company, because obviously no one wants to be the person who gets blamed when it all goes wrong. And you need to have the right buy-in from the right level in your organization, and depending on the size of your organization and its complexity will depend on what that right level is. Some relation whether to register dot gTLD, I am not going to talk about generic terms because other people on the panel are. But in terms of the branded ones, it's really, first of all, is there a kind of business desire, does anyone have a kind of positive marketing strategy for using this. And kind of there may be people in the room and may be people on the panel who may have one, but I have certainly been consulting with many sort of my opposite numbers in other organizations, particularly in the media industry, and I'm yet to find anyone who says that their business is crying out for this and they want this. So that's the first thing. You know, then to consider what the risks are, what's the risk of a third-party applying, what's the likelihood of being able to successfully challenging any third party who applies, either by a dispute procedure, objection procedure, or by a legal action. And again, that's going to vary from brand to brand, really. If you know that you're operating in an area where there's your brand and a number of other companies who are using either identical or similar brands for other fields of activity, you may need to get into the process earlier than if you know that you are the only one. The issue that Caroline mentioned, the single location for legitimate content, is this going to provide a single location for legitimate content? And again, it may do for some people but not necessarily for all. In our business, we have got multiple brands. We have also got multiple legitimate sources for content. So we have obviously our own, the BBC platform, we have group companies, we have got independent producers who make programs for us, we have overseas broadcasters we sell the programs to, we have licensees who make merchandise, we have got retailers. How far do you go, if you have a dot BBC or dot whatever branded platform, how far do you want to go in letting third parties that you don't really control operate in that space? It's not a straightforward decision. And then, you know, we have also our own sort of particular internal vagaries, which is we need to make a distinction between what is publicly funded content which paid for by the UK public and what is commercial activity. And so we do that by using the bbc.co.uk platform for the UK public service activity and the commercial activity either within the UK or outside of the UK is on bbc.com. And bbc.com is a similar Web site, but if you access that outside the UK, which is the site you would see outside the UK, it does things like it carries advertising, which we absolutely cannot do within the UK because of the charter of the organization. So again, there's those issues to think about in terms of how would you make the relevant distinction if you are moving into a different space. How to operate. I mean, can you do it internally or do you need an external supplier? I suspect most brand owners have no idea how to do this for themselves. And you will need an external supplier to do it for you. And I don't know, but I suspect there's probably quite a limited pool of people that you'd trust to look after your brand for you in this new space. So again, that might be a factor you take into account in deciding how early you engage in the process. And then everyone has been mentioning obviously the cost, not just the cost of the application fee but also possibly the cost if it goes to an auction, which could skyrocket. I've seen estimates of the costs to actually set up and run plus the application fee of more like $500,000 a year for the first year. And then you also need, of course, your kind of fighting fund for things like legal objections, 10- to $23,000 to do a legal rights objection, or court action if someone else is applying for your brand as a dot brand and you need to challenge it. I could go on. I mean, the next -- >>NICK WOOD: That's.... >>SUSAN PAYNE: Yeah. >>NICK WOOD: I think people have got a sort of inkling that this isn't something you are looking forward to with a great deal of enthusiasm. However, you did mention a number of things that brought Fred down right from the back of the room. So Fred, would you like to ask your question? Because there's something. >>FREDERICK FELMAN: Thanks a lot. I am Fred Felman -- okay. Is this microphone? Here, I will try this. Okay. So I am Fred Felman. I am from MarkMonitor. We are a brand protection company and we service some of the world's largest companies. And as part of that we are actually a registrar, a domain name registrar. So we did a survey of roughly 100 customers. 92 respondents. And I just want to magnify some of the things David said and you said because they are actually told in this survey, which is of the people who are sort of clueless, there are about 16% of the people who are clueless and don't know what they are going to do here at all. In fact, when asked about whether they were aware, 16% said no. When asked will they apply or not, this is kind of interesting to me, 22% of them said they would -- excuse me, 23% said they would, 22 no, and 55 are still working on that. In terms of usage, which gets to what you were talking about, there's a range of usage, approaching 70% said it was defensive, and by defensive doesn't mean you can have it remain fallow. It means you are going to put it into the root and put some things there but you are probably not going to drive traffic there because that's kind of a big task. About just over 10% said they were going to do it for internal use, internal and partners about 20%. Internal partners and customers, about 30%. And those weren't mutually exclusive. They could choose more than one because if you look at this, it might be an evolution. >>NICK WOOD: Fred can I just ask, is this published? >>FREDERICK FELMAN: Yes, it's on circumstance chem ID actually. So if you look on circle ID, our product marketing person, Lisa Cooper, I think, actually posted it, so it's available there. I think more interestingly, and it's probably getting into some of the stuff people are going to talk about and I will get this out once so I won't come up and bother you again. 75% of our customers said their costs are going to increase with respect to protecting their brand, and I'm sure you guys will talk about that. What we didn't ask them, which is interesting from a marketing perspective is what effect is this going to have on your search engine marketing costs, because I think that's really where the money is. It's sort of mouse droppings if you think of 185K when you consider an advertising budget. The last thing I want to say is, when asked about specific extensions they would register in, there wasn't a single one that rated above 15% in terms of intent to register secondary names. >>NICK WOOD: So that was at the second level? >>FREDERICK FELMAN: Yep. So just some stats for you, and I didn't mean to speak for so long. But that might be interesting. >>NICK WOOD: Okay. Let's have another question, then I'll go back to the panel. Philip. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Thanks, it follows up very much on the observations I think we just heard from the BBC. I just tried an experiment and typed in BritishAirways.aero. Some of you may know the A-E-R-O extension exist. If you do that it resolves to BritishAirways.com. If you put in British travel it resolves to BritishAirways.com, which I think says a lot about brand identity and where you are today. And my question is for the likes of the BBC, I'm a great advocate of the BBC News site. It's a regular visitation for me throughout the day, like many others and I think you have done exceptionally well for creating your identity online in that. And it's a question for yourself and any other member. Panel, actually. You have spent lots of money in identifying a certain place where we can find you very successfully. And the costs of moving that, the costs of the promotion to move that are going to be significant, you know. Had you started six years ago and dot BBC had been an option then, maybe decisions could have been different. But they are not today. And I wonder just how much that is part of the thinking in terms of the cost/benefit of a dot brand. >>SUSAN PAYNE: I would say yes, for us it probably is certainly part of the thinking. I should say we haven't actually reached a final decision on -- we're probably still in that 50-odd percent who are yet to decide. But certainly, yes. When I have been talking to people about do they see this as a good thing, do they want do it, generally, no. They are saying we just spent a lot of time and money and effort making sure everyone can find us on bbc.co.uk and bbc.com. Why would we want to move? >>NICK WOOD: Thank you. Let's have just one more question from Karla who has got the chat room up there because I want to make sure we push through to the end so everyone has a chance. >>KARLA VALENTE: Hi. The question comes from Dennis. So if a company, organization will get their own gTLD, what will they do with their main brand, dot com, dot org, dot net, dot biz, and any other gTLD that gets released? Will they hand them back? Let's say with BBC. Will they hand back BBC.com when they get dot BBC? I see the reasons for having dot BBC, especially with all their brands, but then would they register BBC dot new gTLDs when the new gTLDs gets released? If so, why? >>NICK WOOD: You are going to hand your brands back, Sue? >>SUSAN PAYNE: Well, in the future that we are being told will exist where everyone lives on a branded space, perhaps we might at some point reach a time where we didn't need to have BBC in various other platforms. I'm very skeptical about that, frankly. And certainly at the outcome. There's no question of us handing back BBC.com to anyone. Who would we hand it back to? And if someone else were to use it, would that not confuse our customers? We couldn't possibly do it. >>NICK WOOD: Thank you. I mentioned earlier that Kristina spends a lot of her time when she is not being fearlessly frightening in the GNSO advising clients, big clients. So I asked her to imagine that all of you are the senior management of a company that she's got to advise pretty quickly at this early stage in the process. And I asked her to imagine that she has just got a couple of minutes to say some pithy things to you about what you need to be doing right now. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Thanks, Nick. Now of course I have to make the standard disclaimer that nothing I say is legal advice. And I should also note that the answer to this question is actually one that can and has taken an entire day with a client. And I think, Sue, that's been your experience as well. It sounds as if it can really take a long time. But if I only have two minutes, I guess what I'm going to say, first off, decide. You need to decide what you are going to do. Do you want to be an applicant? Do you want to be an applicant in the first round? Do you not want to be an applicant and you just want to be an objector? Do you not want to be an applicant, you will wait and see if you are going to be an objector and you are just going to be a registrant user? Whatever works for your company and your brand, you have to make a decision. You, in much the same way Sue was talking about, you don't want to be the person who made the decision not to go forward or to go forward, you also don't want to be the person who unilaterally makes the decision that it's your decision to make. Because the first time that you're CEO hears that someone else in your industry or someone else, one of his friends, they have gotten a new gTLD, he is going to want to know why didn't we do anything about in? Why didn't I know? In terms of deciding, I think there are definitely things that you need to think about. What is really the value in terms of what is the message that you want to convey with the TLD? How will you use it? Is it something that you would want a generic? And if you want a generic, are you going to run it as an open TLD or are you going to try to run it as a community? Is that how you are going to apply? Or are you going to apply for dot brand? Because the answers to all of those questions really will determine the path that you have to take if you decide that you are, in fact, going to apply, both in terms of whether it's going to be in the first round or second. Cost is going to be huge consideration because you not only need to think about the cost to put the application together, which could involve, in many cases, very complex jurisdictional analyses, tax considerations; for multi-national corporations, do you have any transfer pricing issues in terms of if you want to have a new entity, be the applicant and then you later want to move it to a different jurisdiction. Insurance, running it, and then what do you do with advertising expenses? If you want to apply for dot brand and then drive traffic to it, you are going to have to engage in a pretty extensive look marketing campaign, and it could take several years before that pays off. And unless and until consumers generally become used to the idea of doing a dot brand, I think you will continue to have to make those types of expenditures. Similarly, time. This is not something that you can just decide to do 30 days before the application window opens. I know that I will get a call from someone 30 days before the application window opens, but I am doing everything I can to avoid that because, to me, the analogy I use is this is not a trademark registration application where you fill out the online form in ten minutes and hit send. This is along the lines of a securities filing and if you don't allocate yourself the proper amount of time, you are not going to put together a complete application. Get your team together. You need an internal team and external team. The internal team could include people that you wouldn't ordinarily think of like government affairs, depending on the TLD that you might want to apply for. Or regulatory. Certainly you need your I.T. people involved. Externally, you would need things like who is going to run it? Just picking up on what Sue is saying. Are you in a position to run it yourself? Even if you are, do you want to? And how are you going to decide who is going to do that? In terms of other areas, tax, insurance, corporate law, one thing that I have been giving a lot of thought to is if a large company wants to apply for the generic for its industry category, to what extent are there antitrust implications of that if one of the largest market players has control of the generic TLD for the industry. How do you deal with that on the front end? Because you certainly don't want to go through the trouble of applying for it, getting it, and then getting a letter from your relevant regulatory authority. The risks that are involved. And Sue covered many of them so I don't duplicate them. But certainly finding out, even if you are not -- even if you think you may be the only entity with your dot brand, do the trademark searching to make sure. And frankly, that may apply to any applicant. Decide how you are going to deal with that because it's entirely possible that the way the current timing is set up, you may not have a whole lot of time to decide. And you are -- I know that ICANN spent a lot of time on the objection process. There are certainly going to be circumstances in which you may not want to use it and that you may be better served handling it in court. And I should say that all of this presumes that certain key issues that are still live in the DAG from the perspective of brand owners have been resolved. And I think the key one I think for brand owners, independent of the trademark protection issue -- well, two, really, is the vertical integration and the fact that ICANN reserves the right to redelegate your TLD. No brand owner is comfortable with that. >>NICK WOOD: Okay. So let's jump forward again. Let's suppose it's the day after all the character strings have been published and at the end of the line we have Debbie Hughes from the international American Red Cross, a major not-for-profit organization. What are you going to do on that day, Debbie? >>DEBRA HUGHES: Other than panic and other than assume or hope that our organization has made the decision, like what Kristina said, I can tell you right now we haven't. And for a lot of the reasons that Sue and Kristina and David have explained. I mean, making sure the right people are at the table to make she is decisions, making sure that it makes marketing sense, making sure that the processes that are going to be in place for the establishment of these new gTLDs fit with our model. For example, the vertical integration issue is huge. I mean, one of the benefits, some may say, for a not-for-profit organization to even pursue this would be the ability to create a safe and secure environment where you can control the registration of domain names and perhaps decrease fraud. Well, a lot of my ability to analyze whether or not it makes sense for organizations like mine would be how is the ICANN system going to evolve. So a lot of those decisions still haven't been made. But, Nick, let's assume we have made a decision one way or the other regardless of whether or not we decide to go forward with an application. We still have to remember that there are other applicants out there; right? And so I'm going to have the unenviable task of dividing my life into two parts. One part would be let's presume we are going to pursue an application. I get the fun part of dealing with that issue, but at the same time now there are other applicants out there. Some dot brand, some may be generics that I now have got to decide, okay, do we want to get engaged in opposing or being concerned about those applications? Are these potential new gTLDs that might be fodder for cybersquatting that I am to have to now start planning me resources for when they go to delegation. So looking at that applicant list is going to be vitally important, because if I haven't made or taken the time to prepare myself and my workload -- because, by the way, this isn't the only thing I do, and a lot of brand owners face that. If my main job was managing the domain name portfolio for the American Red Cross, maybe this wouldn't be that big of a concern or issue for me, and I am saying that facetiously because of course it would be. But I don't. And because I have a limited team and because I have limited resources, it becomes vitally important for me to start planning now to make sure I have the right people at the table who understand regardless of whether or not we decide to do a dot gTLD, what's the budget I am going to need for doing this opposition process? What's the budget I'm going to need to make sure that when these new gTLDs go to delegation, am I going to be able to even take care of or take advantage of these rights protection mechanisms that we have all worked so hard to pursue? And I'll talk a little bit about that more later. >>NICK WOOD: Thank you. J. Scott. >>J. SCOTT EVANS: I just have a question. I am J. Scott Evans from Yahoo!, that I have pondered in my mind. Under the legal precepts as they exist in most jurisdictions today, everything on the right side of the dot is considered to be a generic. What effect does putting your billion dollar brand on the right side of the dot is to you are enforceability rights? I mean, the first time you bring a multimillion dollar lawsuit in a jurisdiction, are you looking at a 15-year litigation because you have to go to the Supreme Court to get them to claim when it's a brand on the right side of a dot, because all the trademark offices have regulations and guidelines and examining manuals that say that it's generic. So when you are asked that by your business people, what effect, I look at all these brilliant brand protection folks and ask what effect are you telling your people it has? >>NICK WOOD: I think we're getting some free very good legal advice here, folks. [ Laughter ] >>NICK WOOD: And I don't see many of you writing it down, so don't blame me in years to come. David Taylor sitting here, I asked him the same question as I asked Kristina earlier. Would he mind imagining that you again are the senior management of a company who has looked at that list and they see that a third party has applied for a character string which is very, very similar or an exact match. So what would you tell them, David? >>DAVID TAYLOR: I'd start with, obviously, saying that nothing I'm about to say is legal advice, and they'd probably follow up and say the rest of it is a load of rubbish. But, anyway, we'll have a go. Certainly, I think if it's close to a valuable trademark, you'd say look carefully at the application that's there, what exactly are they -- have they got in it? What are they intending to do with that application? So that would be the first point, which is something which would be clearly necessary. Then you may well be advising on filing or not filing a legal rights objection. And that in itself, I think, would be quite dependent on the -- you know, some of the RPMs that are in place and whether the PDDRP is something which is potent enough to deal with any issues down the line. And if it is potent enough, you may think, okay, we won't file, we'll just let it go through, and that's fine. But if it's not potent enough, then you may be considering, should we be suing and who should we be suing? Should we be suing ICANN? It gets quite interesting, and we'll have to see where those sort of things go. But we'll find the answers out, I think, in a year or so. Was there another thing we've got? >>NICK WOOD: No. Thanks. >>DAVID TAYLOR: Good. >>NICK WOOD: That's very helpful. I was going to take a straw poll on who ever thought of suing ICANN. But I thought it would be unfair. [ Laughter ] >>NICK WOOD: Okay. Can I just ask the rest of the panel, anything else that you've thought about for that kind of -- this time that comes up when the list is published? Anyone got any thoughts on the panel, or, indeed, in the room about the public comment mechanism which has been created? So anyone here can write in and say anything about any applicant, and it will be, well, a question for ICANN, perhaps, I'm not quite sure. Is it going to go straight to the evaluators or will a summary of it from the ICANN staff go to the evaluators? Anyone know? Anyone care to ask about that? Anyone think it's a good mechanism, a not-so-good mechanism? I'm not sure if this means we've got a room full of quislings or not. Kristina Rosette. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I can certainly see the value. I can also imagine that the volume of public comments that will come in will be staggering. And I am just assuming that that will be the case. I think of it as kind of the public forum on steroids. And I can certainly see that there might be circumstances in which there is information that really is material to whether or not a third-party application goes in or proceeds that the applicant may not have disclosed and there may not be any other way for the evaluation panel to learn that information. Having said that, if I were advising clients on this point, I'd make absolutely sure beyond 100% that all of the information that I was going to put forward in a public comment period was true. And I think ICANN is really going to need to make sure that they are set up in such a way so that they can process those public comments in a way that doesn't further delay the examination process. >>NICK WOOD: Thank you. We've got two comments. Let's take Philip first. Philip, can you can quite quick, because we have some chat rooms. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Philip Sheppard from AIM, but speaking in personal capacity. As we all know, the reason for public comment process is very much outside of our immediate world here, it's looking at things like maybe community applications and attempting to validate whether they are true community applications. So I think there are some good reasons why they are built into the process, and in a nondiscriminatory process, you can't have that. But I think Kristina's point is valid, actually. I mean, I represent a number of famous branded goods companies. And there aren't many of them who will not find somewhere in a brand name SUCKS type on the Internet, a disgruntled customer, we've certainly seen the ICANNs public comment process heartily abused in the past in all sorts of ways. And I feel with the dot brand applications, that may be the case. It's noise in the system. Hopefully that can be filtered out. But it is a watchout. >>NICK WOOD: Karla, you have questions from the chat room? >>KARLA VALENTE: I have two questions. One is from John. Given that there are 28,762 names -- some are brands, but some are generic -- that are registered across dot com, org, biz, mobi asia, tel, are brand owners more likely to concentrate on the big three, com, net, org, or the ccTLDs, rather than new gTLDs? >>NICK WOOD: Well, I guess ICANN is gambling they're going to go for the new gTLDs. But I've got no answer. Charlotte. >>CHARLOTTE WALTERS: I think from a brand owner's point of view, that until we see how consumers are going to respond, the emphasis is still going to be on the com, net, org, that we all focus on at the moment. There are other gTLDs that have been out there for a long time -- biz, info, for example -- which most of us aren't really looking at and certainly aren't encouraging our internal clients to register in. And I don't see that changing immediately, at least until consumers have gotten used to the new system. >>NICK WOOD: Thank you. Karla. >>KARLA VALENTE: Does the panel support that the brand owner is able to manage the registry infrastructure as well as the sales front for example the registrar? >>NICK WOOD: Richard. Thank you. >>RICHARD WATERHOUSE: Certainly from our point of view, there would be -- there was never a doubt that we would not be dealing as a registrar ourselves, we would seek to find a partner who could provide that service for us. We look at all times at what is critical to our business and the things that we outsource. So certainly this is something that we would outsource. >>NICK WOOD: Thank you. Jean-Christophe. >>JEAN-CHRISTOPHE VIGNES: Jean-Christophe Vignes from eBrand Services. And this question is actually not for the panel. Because we're fortunate enough to -- if you're here, you're aware of what's going on and you have some interests. My comment was more following David's point on many brand owners are still not aware of the issue and still don't know what they want to do about it for those who are aware. And now, the example I'm going to give will show my age, but most of you will remember a little site called McDonalds.com, which in 1994 was cybersquatted -- it's one of the first cybersquatting case -- just because McDonald's didn't care at that point enough about the Internet to get its own domain name secured. In 1994, it was hard to predict how useful the Web will be. But if you look at alexa.com today, McDonald's is one of the 1,000 more visited sites daily on the Internet. The point I am trying to make here is, as Kristina pointed out, new gTLDs are not (inaudible). This is a global discussion for legal, marketing, technical, all kind of aspects. And anyone can say "no." But I do think it's a pity that some people at the moment say, "I don't care," because nobody knew three years ago that Twitter, Facebook, or, before that, the Web would be so useful to your brand and to the way you talk to your customers. It's really hard to predict the future, but it's really easy to blame you for past oversights. It will be really easy in two years. Thank you. >>NICK WOOD: Thank you very much. Okay. Let's go forward again. So supposing it's -- Oh, beg your pardon. Very sorry, missed you. >>LEN LAVENS: Len Lavens, ISOC Belgium, security. Two things. One, I can imagine any big international firm taking its own name or brand or whatever, not using it publicly, but using it in their private networks, and using it to limit access to those networks because they will control access to that network through their DNS and all the other things, which would be harder on the public network. And the second -- and then you can even later switch to a more public use, if one decision like that marketing-wise comes around. The second big question security-wise is, if you are going to ahead and you are choosing an operator by which certification, quality, all the things, and permanent control, you will choose your operator. And who is reliable if your central DNS for your root, your -- gets hacked big way? You will be world news all over the world. >>NICK WOOD: Anyone want to come back on that? >>CAROLINE PERRIARD: I think it's a free world in a way. If a company wants to file for an extension for its own use, they're free to do it. Someone mentioned that maybe a company will do a defensive registration. I doubt that, because it's a lot of investment and this would be a bit silly. But if you want to use for your own use and then use it externally afterwards, I mean, this is free, and it's really -- it's first come, first served in a way. This is really the same. And then the provider you choose, you probably do an all-day benchmarking, whatever, and then you take the risk. And I agree, you take a risk. But it's like when you're choosing a hosting provider you also take a risk. So I don't really see an issue with that. >>NICK WOOD: Thank you. Charlotte, can I ask you a question. How do you think that online marketing is going to change in the age of the new gTLDs? I mean, Orange is a very forward-looking company. So, any views on that? >>CHARLOTTE WALTERS: I think, initially, the answer is probably not a lot. I think there's going to be a transition period in which we will need to educate both our consumers and our internal customers as to possible uses of the new gTLDs. I certainly foresee a big battle with our internal marketeers on, say, a country or territory basis or an enterprise basis to give up the goodwill that they have already built in the domain names that exist. However, in the long term, the ideal position that we'd all be moving to is being able to run everything under your single dot brand. I agree with what you said, Kristina, that I think it's unlikely that you're going to invest this much money and the ongoing annual fees to keep a dot brand going simply for defensive purposes. I think we're all about building and driving brand value, in which case if you have an asset that could become a mark of value and a mark of quality so that consumers would come to recognize that something that is dot Orange is genuine and that there is no risk of phishing or any other malicious acts underneath it, then that would be the ideal position that we are all aiming to get to. The question is, how long does it take you to get there. In the meantime, I think that defensive registrations, which we're all used to doing, is going to be an ongoing factor. And that means at the second level under any new generics as well until we know how consumers are going to treat these new generics. Using the McDonalds.com example, I don't think any responsible brand owner is just going to say, "Well, I'll wait and see," because you don't know how long or how much it will cost to recover the name at present. So on a longer-term view, yes, it -- there is a lot of potential value. And from a marketing perspective, there's a lot of potential value. But it will take a long time, I think, to educate internally and externally as to how to get there. >>NICK WOOD: Thank you. Antony, did you write that for Charlotte? [ Laughter ] >>ANTONY VAN COUVERING: I'll happily take credit for it. First, I would like to congratulate you all for doing so well when someone sleeps in the front row. I have two questions, and they're really questions. The first has to do with distribution networks. And I'd like to ask you if any of you have looked at a gTLD as a way of validating your distributors, for instance, if you're a car company and you have dealerships or you're a sports league and you have teams and so on. Sorry. And the second question is having to do with the background check that's in the rules. Most large companies are, of course, involved in commerce all the time and have a lot of transactions and tend to end up getting sued at some point or another. And sometimes they lose. And so banks, for instance, have been found to be fraudulent in certain cases and so on. So I'm wondering if you think that affects your chances for succeeding in your applications. Thank you. >>RICHARD WATERHOUSE: Just coming back to your first question, looking at distributors. Within the RIBA, that's essentially what the RIBA is, it's made up as a member organization. So it has architects as individuals and practices who are chartered practices as well. So we see this as a way of using procedures and the policies to only allow access to those individuals who can demonstrate that they've achieved the qualification, whether it be in the U.K. or other countries that would form part of a confederated bid. So we see that as really powerful for consumer protection. So that's exactly why -- certainly why I'm here. >>NICK WOOD: And anyone like to comment on the background checks? [ Laughter ] >>RICHARD WATERHOUSE: For the architects, that's relatively easy. It's professional qualification. If you're not on the register, that will (inaudible) of the background checks. >>ANTONY VAN COUVERING: My question is, rather, to you as the applicant for the TLD. Presumably, you -- I mean, I think you can't have been convicted of fraud or bribery or terrorism or, indeed, -- >>RICHARD WATERHOUSE: Fortunately, I haven't been. [ Laughter ] >>ANTONY VAN COUVERING: I actually didn't mean you personally. I meant the company. I meant the company itself. And if you see -- I assume that it's aimed at individuals. But I'm wondering if you think that there's a chance that it would be aimed at a company. >>NICK WOOD: Thank you. We have a response, a suggestion. >> I have a question. Does that mean that Google could not apply for dot Google because of the court decision in Italy that found them guilty of violating their national laws on privacy? Would -- >> I would say you ask ICANN. >> If Google can't, does that mean someone else could? >>DAVID TAYLOR: I was just going to say, that's under appeal. >> (saying name) from New York. First of all, thanks for being here. This has been a group of expertise that I certainly haven't seen yet. So it's been very informative. My main question is to follow up on the young man who reported earlier, said something like 22% of companies were thinking about applying for TLDs, and only 16% really weren't aware at this time, I believe it was somewhere in that ballpark. From my experience, I've talked to very few people who really have any idea what this is when I've talked to executives and that kind of thing. And to the best of my knowledge, there's really only one brand in the world that's actually come out and said they're going to do this. So I just want to drill down a little bit more about that concept and see what you guys feel like how our company is researching this. Is it really more tech or marketing people that are trying to stay on the forefront and protect their companies against really missing out or are CEOs really aware of this and pursuing this actively at this time. You know, what's your feeling on that? >>DEBRA HUGHES: Thanks for your question, I think it's a good one. I think there are two things would I mention. First being a challenge from a communicating standpoint, our senior executives is this isn't a domain name, this is a registry. What does had a mean? Because the business clients that we have to talk to, they don't understand any of this. And so that's part of the challenge. And I think the other thing, too, is a lot of the organizations that I have been talking to for well is for-profit companies. They were kind of thinking this was going to go away. They could kind of put their heads down in the sand and, oh, that's something for later. That's something for later. And they kept pushing it off. And even though a lot of us have been aggressively trying to put that in the forefront, this is a true thing that may be happening, you have got to wrap your hands around it, I think from a communicating standpoint, I think it's really a challenge to organizations who don't quite get it, and then they are kind of also hoping it's not going to happen. And now we seem to be in this state where you have got to really start taking a hard look at these issues and the timing now, it's becoming more and more crucial. A lot of companies aren't going to come right out and say, yes, we're going to do it. Canon did what they did for whatever reason they chose to, but I think a lot of the organizations we talked to, there's still more benchmarking they want to do amongst themselves, try to figure out strategically what they want to do. And honestly, I don't think a lot of organizations have figured it out yet. And I think those statistics that Fred shared are just wonderful because it doesn't make me feel so bad anymore because I was thinking, well, gosh, why are we taking so long? But I think it's a challenge that everybody is having. >> Just to follow-up briefly, if anybody wants to comment, would you expect to see a significant number of applications in this first round, which most people think will happen in the next year, from major brands? >>NICK WOOD: Let's just hold that question, if we can, because at the end of it I'm going to ask everyone. So have a think now, actually. I just would like to take a straw poll at the end of this on how many new gTLDs will be applied for, do you think? So I am going to ask you all at the end. Is that okay? >> No problem. >>NICK WOOD: Thank you. >> Thank you very much. >>NICK WOOD: Adam. >>ADAM SMITH: Adam Smith from World Trademark Review magazine. In this whole debate there are a lot of people who seem to be presuming one way another the way consumers will react to new gTLDs, whether it's brand protection and trademark protection people assuming that consumers will be confused and so on, or, on the other hand, domain people or people who are for new gTLDs saying how great they will be and these sorts of things. I just wonder, from some of the big brands represented on the panel or anyone else, has there been any research done that's publicly available into what consumers think about this? >>NICK WOOD: Charlotte. >>CHARLOTTE WALTERS: This actually follows on, I think, from the last question as well. I have actually only read one bit of research into what consumers think about this that was, I think, published The Guardian about a year back, and there wasn't a lot of knowledge about this from consumers. And it wasn't a particularly enthusiastic response from their point of view. I think the question of making sure whatever we do is user friendly is something that is an issue across all domain names. But it's one of the problems that we, as brand owners, have going back to our boards and our chairmen in that there has been very little research into, "A," what consumers think about this, and also what the return of investment are, what the costs are. That's very difficult to go back and say, "I need a lot of money, but I don't know when I need it or how much it will be or what returns you're going to get for your investment." >>NICK WOOD: Sue, have you got an additional thing to say? >>SUSAN PAYNE: Just a quick one. I was also going to say, would I suggest this is something that ICANN ought to have been studying before they launched this process rather than anyone asking this question now. You know, there's been -- we keep being told this is going to increase competition, there's a desire for this and so on. Where is the study that shows us that? And where was that at the outset of the process rather than perhaps thinking about doing it now? >>NICK WOOD: In fairness, I should say that there is a new economic study out. It doesn't do everything you say, but there has been some, it looks to me, anyway, I don't know how many people have read it, that significant efforts are being made in that direction. But probably not for consumer research. >> So just a follow-up. First of all, thanks for calling me a young man because at 47 I don't often get called a young man so I really appreciate that. [ Laughter ] >> This is definitely a skewed set of results. There were 92 people who had the wherewithal to hire a corporate domain name registrar, so this isn't your average audience. I want to amplify something you said a minute ago which is great. I think ease of use is something that actually is going to come from this but with respect to IDNs and international domain names, because you have a whole host of people who would prefer probably to type in their own language on their own native language keyboards, and, you know, gTLDs don't really service them. So.... >>NICK WOOD: Thank you. Karla, some more. >>KARLA VALENTE: Hi. The question comes from Dennis. The whole point of nonconfusion would be having dot BBC. So anything not under dot BBC would not be official BBS stuff. So BBS equals BBC. So he was talking about BBC. Basically making the point that for the consumer, if they find something under dot BBC, they would be certain to be BBC. >>SUSAN PAYNE: Yes, that's certainly an argument, and it's something that is obviously under consideration. But I would keep coming back to the point that at the moment we know, and I would say most of our public know, that BBC dot CO dot UK is where the public service stuff is and if you want information about a particular program, it's on bbc.co.uk slash program name. So why is it, then, that there are still people squatting on other -- on program name dot com program name CO dot UK? The fact is there is already one source for the legitimate content and somehow people are confused, so how is the dot BBC really going to change that? Maybe it will, but people are confused at the moment. >>NICK WOOD: Thank you. Carolyn. >>CAROLINE PERRIARD: Yeah, this is coming back to what I said at the start. I don't think consumers really know where the brand is coming from. There are so many brands out there that are belonging to major companies, and we are not going to reduce that. So we are really asking a lot to marketing if they have to promote the subbrand or the brand of the product and the company name attached to that. And this is why I think either we go for 500 new gTLDs -- for example, if I take dot KitKat, dot Nesquik, dot Nespresso, whatever, all the brands Nestle is owning, or we just go dot Nestle, but then we have a problem in communication because we have to change our communication line. And I think it's really the point of Sue, is that it's too easy to say just take your company name and then consumer will know it's you. >>NICK WOOD: Antony. Sorry, Kristina. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I would just follow-up on that in terms of some of the corporate marketing folks I have talked to say, yes, it's theoretically possible. But they anticipate having to spend tens of millions of dollars to get there. And in large part, that's why some of them are still trying to figure out whether that mathematical ratio works for them. >> I think it may be useful information. It's not exactly on point, but there has been quite a bit of research done on ccTLDs on what drives registration volume. And it seems to correlate quite highly -- this is done for the DotAsia launch, and it looked at the ccTLDs in the Asia-Pacific region. And registration volume correlates quite highly with GDP, of course, with Internet penetration, and most of all with policy. So, for instance, you will have a large number of people in Hong Kong registering names, but very few under dot com dot HK. Instead, they will go to dot com. So ease of use and ease of registration seems to be major factor in how many registrations there are. When you are considering if you want to open your TLD to the public, that is certainly something to consider. I'm sure there's a temptation to have various restrictions, but unless you are comfortable with the small number of registrants, that's something that you might want to look at. Thank you. >>NICK WOOD: Jump forward to Richard on this, because, Richard, do you think that a new gTLD could make a positive contribution to the bottom line, to your bottom line, or to the bottom line of other applicants? >>RICHARD WATERHOUSE: This is either the $64 million question or the mindless $64 million question. I think we can all expect the market for domain names to continue to expand. There's a continued drive for that, but at some point there has to be a limit. I think there will be a number of organizations that will look at this speculatively and look more away from the brand toward generic terms to see is this something we should go for, can we sell multiple domains that will generate huge sums of money and we can all retire. I think that's unlikely. I think the brand position is a stronger position and there's a reason for that. And the multitude of options that will be available should all the generic terms be licensed as global top-level domain names means the price for each registration will have to come down. And that will make it financially very, very difficult to get any return on some of the very top top-level names that might be used. So commercially I think we have already heard, the cost of actually setting one of these up will be very, very high. You have to be very certain that there will be a return commercially, and that that commercial gain will be, certainly for us, long term. >>NICK WOOD: Karla, something from the chat room? >>KARLA VALENTE: Yes, from John. Will new gTLDs be too dependent on brand protection registrations for a major part of the revenue and how will the brand owners feel about this? >>NICK WOOD: Okay, line up, folks. Who wants to go first? [ Laughter ] >>NICK WOOD: Who wants to answer that one first? Charlotte, come. >>CHARLOTTE WALTERS: Two words. Yes, and better. >>NICK WOOD: Caroline, how do you feel? >>CAROLINE PERRIARD: I think everybody is making money enough here because as lawyer, we will get more look, and registrar will get more domains to register and there will be new registries, and lawyers will be really happy. So I think here in the room, everybody will be happy because we will have more work. Whether it's really needed, whether it's mandatory, whether it's urgent that we have that, well, I open the question. >>NICK WOOD: Thank you. Anyone else on the panel who would like to comment on that? No? Okay. >> Hello, Philip (saying name), Internet Investment Group. Not very acquainted with brands, but I had a little thought about it. I am not a Latin thinker, so TLD I also think of Arab or whatever. I looked at two car brands, BMW, the known German one, and Citron, and CitroNn has been translated in Latin and all kinds of languages. BMW, as luck, has not. So even if you think not about dot BMW, dot Citron, do you see differences for several brands? Does Citro n have a difficult time because it has this special "E" and it is automatically translated in Arab and does BMW have an easy time because it's almost impossible to translate around the world? How do you see that? >>NICK WOOD: Anyone on the panel care to comment? Anyone else care to comment? Sue. >>SUSAN PAYNE: All I was going to say was for the -- I guess with a company like Citron which uses translated versions, yeah, there's a big challenge for them there, isn't there, because they're not looking at maybe one branded TLD; they're looking at, you know, however many. And that would be the case, I think, for many companies. But it also applies, I think, in the generics as well, as we've been talking about. There might be a generic for dot food or something. But there'll probably be a number of other in different languages. And so it's just all more cost. >> Some brands might be lucky, like I think BMW has an easy time, and Citro n has a difficult time. >>NICK WOOD: Okay. Please. >>JEAN-PAUL BECHU: Excuse me. I'm Jean-Paul Bechu from NameShield. Our customer is Citron, and they are having -- [ Laughter ] >> -- a very hard time to -- getting really confused about what's going on. And one thing that's puzzling me is the fact that we've been in that -- we've been trying to work in this industry for 16 years now, and we still see a lot of brand owners that are not -- have made the choice to sit down and analyze and put down a strategy for defensive strategy or registration strategy. And I think it's confusing people on the Internet a lot. And brand owners are really confused about what's going on. So -- and Citrozn is really confused, too. And we're confused because we're not -- we don't have the right tools as of today to give them the right advice. So we will -- we are coming here to get that -- the right information -- >> (Off mike). >> Yes, we do. >>NICK WOOD: Sorry, we have another question. >> I'm (saying name) from Indonesia. I am from ministry of ICT of Indonesia. Actually, this is not my field. But according to the problem that happened in Indonesia for banking company, it was happen that there are -- there is a big bank in Indonesia, BCA, Bank Central Asia. It was -- had been froze. There is www.klikbykey.BCA.com And there is www.klikbc.bca.com. And because of that problem, government strongly suggests all banking use ccTLD as their top-level domain and their name of banking become second-level domain. My question is, if this matter hurt a company of banking, because I know that in Indonesia, banking is very international, if they want to make their own name become a TLD, for example, dot BCA, on the other hand, as government, we strongly suggest them to use ccTLD to protect them and to ensure the other protection by banking transactions, banking online. So what then happen? I just want to give -- to share this problem to all of you. Even I don't know what is the solution that might be possible for this. Because I don't really agree. I just -- I try to find a better -- better words. I prefer if banking is under watching of government institution, even as I know dot MA for the banking, the banking must be -- get approval from ministry of finance to register their domain name. >>NICK WOOD: Thank you. Would anyone like to comment on that? Kristina. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I guess the only thing I'll say is not really an answer to your question. I apologize for that. But I think the application of new gTLDs, whether they're in Latin or IDNs, to the banking and financial services sector raises huge issues that, frankly, we could talk about from now until Friday. But I do think it's going to be -- I mean, you're exactly right. How do you balance that? What role do governments have? What mechanisms does ICANN have to deal with those types of issues if somebody who doesn't have a bank applies for dot bank or, you know, a bank name, et cetera. So, I mean, I would actually suggest that perhaps, to turn the question back to you, is that perhaps this is something that within relevant governments, that the various treasury departments and other regulatory agencies responsible for banking, maybe they -- this would be an opportunity for them to work out a solution that could be applied or adopted, you know, voluntarily, of course, by financial institutions in their own countries, and then you would have something that would not only be uniform, but would also be less susceptible to fraud. >>NICK WOOD: Thank you. We've got another couple of questions and there are a couple of things that I know members of the panel would like to bring up, so, Karla. KARLA VALENTE: That's -- the last question is from our remote participants. It comes from Ryan Katz. Economic study recommends discrete limited rounds of new gTLDs. What is the likelihood that this is the case? >> Good going, Karla, you tell us. Phil, please. >>PHILIP CORWIN: Philip Corwin asking in my completely personal capacity. And this may be more of a marketing than a legal question, but I ask the panel because you've been talking to a lot of different companies. Let's say five years from now, looking into the crystal ball -- and I'll use consumer electronics, kind of that category, because we know dot Canon. Let's say there's a bunch of several applicants in that category, whether it's dot Canon, dot Sony, dot Apple, and that one of them, and maybe it's Apple, because they have sort of this cult-like following, I don't know if they're planning to apply, but maybe one of them is fantastically successful in building a brand TLD and in the process making a big impression and changing consumer psychology about how to search on the Internet and, to some extent, would you suspect that that, if there is a breakthrough in a big consumer brand category, that that winner would have created a model that others could replicate or that would be more the exception that prove the rule type of success? >> Tricky looking forward like that. But one thing we see in almost every industry is innovation is usually copied and replicated. There are always innovators who are successful and others who aren't. Successful model is the survival of the fittest. So I would thoroughly expect there's nothing different here in what's going on with this technology. It's the same as every other technology, every other industry. Where something works, it will be repeated. >>NICK WOOD: Thank you. Now, I promised both Kristina and David -- in fact, I bribed them. Said if they would appear on this panel, because there's a lot of detail in this and they're both expert in it, I said to them that because brands are going to be dependent upon the rights protection mechanisms that are being built into the process, that I would give them a free shot at ICANN, I would allow them to make one suggestion to the rights protection mechanisms that have been proposed so far that they think should be urgently addressed before the final applicant guidebook is produced. So who wants to go first? You've got about ten seconds each? >>JIM BASKIN: This is not a question, but somebody left a phone in the back. And if you're missing the phone, I'm not going to describe it because you have to describe it for yourself. I'm going to take it to the ICANN office or give it to somebody to take to the ICANN office. But if there's anybody here right now who can describe it if you want to. >> Is it black? [ Laughter ] >> It's yours. >>NICK WOOD: Okay, guys, you're next. What would you change, David? >>DAVID TAYLOR: I'll go first, because it's always worth letting Kristina have the last word. I've learned that. I think on the URS, the question of what the "R" is now, is it rapid or is it redundant? I think it's possibly turned into a poor man's UDRP. And I'm also concerned that it isn't really that fast. And if you look at the EUDRP, which has come up, the first case on the EUDRP took 35 days, start to finish. And a URS can take 47 days now. That's my -- >>NICK WOOD: That's on the record. Thanks. Okay, Kristina. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Just -- >>NICK WOOD: Whatever you like. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I only get one or one free -- >>NICK WOOD: You get one. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I'm going to have to -- no, it's hard. I think if you only get one, then I would actually do the one that has never happened, namely, some mechanism that will address the concern of brand owners to -- so that they can avoid having to do defensive registrations. >>NICK WOOD: Does the panel agree? [ Applause ] >>NICK WOOD: The panel agrees with that one. Right. So the very last thing we're going to do is do a straw poll. And I'm really interested to see this. I'm going to go 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, and completely crazy. How many new gTLDs are going to be applied for? Who thinks up to 100? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: (inaudible). >>NICK WOOD: New gTLDs in the first round, Latin or IDN, anyone who pays $185,000 in the first round. A handful are up to 100. Who thinks more like 200? Who thinks 300? 300 in the -- 300 agree? Yeah? Keep watching. 300. Who thinks 400? Who thinks 500? And is there anyone here crazy enough to think over 500? Which is -- [ Laughter ] [ Applause ] >>NICK WOOD: We're done. I just want to thank this panel, some of whom have come all the way for this. I think it's really useful to get brand experts like this sitting on a panel, talking about something else other than just the minutia of rights protection details. So please give them a big round of applause. Thank you. [ Applause ]