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

gTLDFull Legal NameE-mail suffixDetail
.通用电气公司GE GTLD Holdings LLCreedsmith.comView
Summary of Answer to Question 18

GE GTLD Holdings LLC (“GEGTLD”), a wholly-owned subsidiary of General Electric Company (“General Electric” or “GE”), is applying for .通用电气公司 (and .GECOMPANY in a separate application) both as a defensive measure to protect and strengthen the GE trademarks and brands, and also to coalesce GE’s current domain names and allow GE’s customers and partners to have a recognized top level domain, housing the most up-to-date and complete information about General Electric as a company, as well as GE’s goods and services, in the Chinese language. .通用电气公司 essentially means .GECOMPANY in Chinese and the .通用电气公司 gTLD will operate in almost exactly the same manner with the same business plan as .GECOMPANY, but will be a destination for customers and potential customers and anyone else looking for information about General Electric in Chinese or who feel more comfortable going to a Chinese-character gTLD. .通用电气公司 (with .GECOMPANY) will examine the market once delegation and launch of .通用电气公司 occurs, and examine whether .通用电气公司 can act as a cornerstone of GEGTLD’s and General Electric’s future online strategic initiative, by providing a trusted and intuitive namespace for consumers of General Electric’s goods and services and a source of information for others, including employees, jobseekers and investors. The .通用电气公司 gTLD will be a specialized gTLD with no public registration market and no revenue streams.

General Electric is one of the top companies in the entire world, with hundreds of businesses and thousands of brands, including the core brand of General Electric itself. The value of the GE brands is incalculable, but in sum total would certainly be worth billions of dollars. The preservation and enhancement of this brand is of the utmost importance to General Electric in all aspects of its operations, including and especially on the Internet. In the new Internet environment, it is important that the users and consumers of GE’s goods and services and GE’s many partners, suppliers, and retailers know exactly where to go for all information regarding General Electric and its many related entities.

The creation of the .通用电气公司 gTLD will better enable General Electric to protect its core brands and the corporate General Electric brand in China and throughout the rest of the world. It will also benefit the general public by assuring Internet users that they will be getting the most up-to-date and accurate information about GE’s products and services, the best customer service experience possible, and a place free from worries of pirates, cybersquatters, typosquatters, and similar wrongdoers. It will also allow the creation of short, memorable domain name addresses to make it easier for the public to find exactly what they are looking for concerning General Electric.

Finally, General Electric will use .通用电气公司 so as to focus its online marketing to the new .GECOMPANY and .通用电气公司 gTLDs so that there will be a consistent message to the public regarding General Electric products and services as well as information about the company itself. GE will examine the marketplace to see if it can use the efficiencies created by this new system and put saved resources into other initiatives to benefit both General Electric and the public at large.

GEGTLD will be allowing registration at the second level on a closed-platform, limited domain name, basis and only for GE divisions and affiliates and possibly for GE partners and suppliers as time goes on.

The online presence of General Electric serves several functions. It informs the public about GE. It provides information about GE’s products and services, and about its partners and affiliates. It provides relevant information to investors and others interested in the financial profile of the company and to job seekers who are interested in career information. It also provides access to certain sites that are only available to the GE community, such as human resources and other corporate policies.

GEGTLD is seeking to apply for .通用电气公司 as a defensive measure to insure the safety of GE’s trademarks and also as a way to coalesce GE’s current domain names and increase the strength of the GE brands in China and the rest of the world. This new gTLD will provide a trusted and intuitive namespace for consumers of General Electric’s goods and services, and will have internal and informational uses such as for human resources and corporate⁄investor information. .通用电气公司 will be a specialized gTLD with no public registration market and no revenue streams. It will be 100% owned by GEGTLD, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of General Electric. The preservation and protection of the GE brands is of paramount importance to General Electric in all aspects of its operations, including and especially on the Internet. Operating the GE brand as a gTLD in Chinese characters will be an important part of GE’s digital strategy in the future.

The entire set of General Electric’s brands, especially the corporate General Electric⁄GE name, is a core asset of GE and the promotion and development of that asset is critical to General Electric’s long-term business and strategic interests. The business strategy for the .通用电气公司 gTLD is centered on the unification of intellectual property rights, promotion, marketing and customer relations across General Electric and all of its brands.

18(a) What is the Mission and Purpose of .通用电气公司?

GE is a diversified infrastructure, finance and media company taking on the worldʹs toughest challenges. From aircraft engines and power generation to financial services, medical imaging, and television programming, GE operates in more than 100 countries and employs about 300,000 people worldwide.

GE has a strong set of global businesses in infrastructure, finance and media aligned to meet todayʹs needs, including the demand for global infrastructure; growing and changing demographics that need access to healthcare, finance, and information and entertainment; and, environmental technologies.

GE traces its beginnings to Thomas A. Edison, who established Edison Electric Light Company in 1878. In 1892, a merger of Edison General Electric Company and Thomson-Houston Electric Company created General Electric Company. GE is the only company listed in the Dow Jones Industrial Index today that was also included in the original index in 1896.

The mission and purpose of the .通用电气公司 gTLD is to act defensively to protect the GE brands and also to strengthen those brands as a trusted and intuitive namespace provided by General Electric, for General Electric customers, partners, affiliates, employees and others seeking information about General Electric, its companies, and its goods and services in China and throughout the world.

General Electric and GEGTLD will use the .通用电气公司 gTLD in an effort to help GE provide the best possible customer service and the most accurate and up-to-date information about GE’s goods and services, as well as the many entities affiliated with General Electric. Domain names may be specialized and formatted in an innovative fashion to enhance the General Electric name and all of GE’s brands. .通用电气公司 will help increase consumer association with the GE brands, and hopefully, give GE the opportunity to retain more control over its reputation and brands and market those brands accordingly. In theory, the .通用电气公司 gTLD will function as one giant house in which to explore all of GE’s brands, products and services, and consumers will be able to trust that they are getting the best and most recent information from the official General Electric entity associated with each second-level domain name within the .通用电气公司 closed gTLD.
gTLDFull Legal NameE-mail suffixDetail
.boatsBlack Shadow, LLCdonuts.coView
Q18A CHAR: 7985

ABOUT DONUTS
Donuts Inc. is the parent applicant for this and multiple other TLDs. The company intends to increase competition and consumer choice at the top level. It will operate these carefully selected TLDs safely and securely in a shared resources business model. To achieve its objectives, Donuts has recruited seasoned executive management with proven track records of excellence in the industry. In addition to this business and operational experience, the Donuts team also has contributed broadly to industry policymaking and regulation, successfully launched TLDs, built industry-leading companies from the ground up, and brought innovation, value and choice to the domain name marketplace.

DONUTS’ PLACE WITHIN ICANN’S MISSION
ICANN and the new TLD program share the following purposes:
1. to make sure that the Internet remains as safe, stable and secure as possible, while
2. helping to ensure there is a vibrant competitive marketplace to efficiently bring the benefits of the namespace to registrants and users alike.

ICANN harnesses the power of private enterprise to bring forth these public benefits. While pursuing its interests, Donuts helps ICANN accomplish its objectives by:

1. Significantly widening competition and choice in Internet identities with hundreds of new top-level domain choices;
2. Providing innovative, robust, and easy-to-use new services, names and tools for users, registrants, registrars, and registries while at the same time safeguarding the rights of others;
3. Designing, launching, and securely operating carefully selected TLDs in multiple languages and character sets; and
4. Providing a financially robust corporate umbrella under which its new TLDs will be protected and can thrive.

ABOUT DONUTS’ RESOURCES
Donuts’ financial resources are extensive. The company has raised more than US$100 million from a number of capital sources including multiple multi-billion dollar venture capital and private equity funds, a top-tier bank, and other well-capitalized investors. Should circumstances warrant, Donuts is prepared to raise additional funding from current or new investors. Donuts also has in place pre-funded, Continued Operations Instruments to protect future registrants. These resource commitments mean Donuts has the capability and intent to launch, expand and operate its TLDs in a secure manner, and to properly protect Internet users and rights-holders from potential abuse.

Donuts firmly believes a capable and skilled organization will operate multiple TLDs and benefit Internet users by:

1. Providing the operational and financial stability necessary for TLDs of all sizes, but particularly for those with smaller volume (which are more likely to succeed within a shared resources and shared services model);
2. Competing more powerfully against incumbent gTLDs; and
3. More thoroughly and uniformly executing consumer and rights holder protections.

THIS TLD
This TLD is attractive and useful to end-users as it better facilitates search, self-expression, information sharing and the provision of legitimate goods and services. Along with the other TLDs in the Donuts family, this TLD will provide Internet users with opportunities for online identities and expression that do not currently exist. In doing so, the TLD will introduce significant consumer choice and competition to the Internet namespace – the very purpose of ICANN’s new TLD program.

This TLD is a generic term and its second level names will be attractive to a variety of Internet users. Making this TLD available to a broad audience of registrants is consistent with the competition goals of the New TLD expansion program, and consistent with ICANN’s objective of maximizing Internet participation. Donuts believes in an open Internet and, accordingly, we will encourage inclusiveness in the registration policies for this TLD. In order to avoid harm to legitimate registrants, Donuts will not artificially deny access, on the basis of identity alone (without legal cause), to a TLD that represents a generic form of activity and expression.

DONUTS’ APPROACH TO PROTECTIONS
No entity, or group of entities, has exclusive rights to own or register second level names in this TLD. There are superior ways to minimize the potential abuse of second level names, and in this application Donuts will describe and commit to an extensive array of protections against abuse, including protections against the abuse of trademark rights.

We recognize some applicants seek to address harms by constraining access to the registration of second level names. However, we believe attempts to limit abuse by limiting registrant eligibility is unnecessarily restrictive and harms users by denying access to many legitimate registrants. Restrictions on second level domain eligibility would prevent law-abiding individuals and organizations from participating in a space to which they are legitimately connected, and would inhibit the sort of positive innovation we intend to see in this TLD. As detailed throughout this application, we have struck the correct balance between consumer and business safety, and open access to second level names.

By applying our array of protection mechanisms, Donuts will make this TLD a place for Internet users that is far safer than existing TLDs. Donuts will strive to operate this TLD with fewer incidences of fraud and abuse than occur in incumbent TLDs. In addition, Donuts commits to work toward a downward trend in such incidents.

OUR PROTECTIONS
Donuts has consulted with and evaluated the ideas of international law enforcement, consumer privacy advocacy organizations, intellectual property interests and other Internet industry groups to create a set of protections that far exceed those in existing TLDs, and bring to the Internet namespace nearly two dozen new rights and protection mechanisms to raise user safety and protection to a new level.

These include eight, innovative and forceful mechanisms and resources that far exceed the already powerful protections in the applicant guidebook. These are:

1. Periodic audit of WhoIs data for accuracy;
2. Remediation of inaccurate Whois data, including takedown, if warranted;
3. A new Domain Protected Marks List (DPML) product for trademark protection;
4. A new Claims Plus product for trademark protection;
5. Terms of use that prohibit illegal or abusive activity;
6. Limitations on domain proxy and privacy service;
7. Published policies and procedures that define abusive activity; and
8. Proper resourcing for all of the functions above.

They also include fourteen new measures that were developed specifically by ICANN for the new TLD process. These are:

1. Controls to ensure proper access to domain management functions;
2. 24⁄7⁄365 abuse point of contact at registry;
3. Procedures for handling complaints of illegal or abusive activity, including remediation and takedown processes;
4. Thick WhoIs;
5. Use of the Trademark Clearinghouse;
6. A Sunrise process;
7. A Trademark Claims process;
8. Adherence to the Uniform Rapid Suspension system;
9. Adherence to the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy;
10. Adherence to the Post Delegation Dispute Resolution Policy;
11. Detailed security policies and procedures;
12. Strong security controls for access, threat analysis and audit;
13. Implementation DNSSEC; and
14. Measures for the prevention of orphan glue records.

DONUTS’ INTENTION FOR THIS TLD
As a senior government authority has recently said, “a successful applicant is entrusted with operating a critical piece of global Internet infrastructure.” Donuts’ plan and intent is for this TLD to serve the international community by bringing new users online through opportunities for economic growth, increased productivity, the exchange of ideas and information and greater self-expression.