18(b) How do you expect that your proposed gTLD will benefit registrants, Internet users, and others?

Prototypical answer:

The key benefits of the .swiss TLD to registrants, end-users and all members of the Swiss community are derived from its purpose and use as a strictly and objectively controlled distinctive label. Registrants benefit from the very nature of the TLD, which by virtue of its purpose is designed to cater to their needs and positioning within the community. End-users benefit from the clear identification of the .swiss TLD as pertaining to all things Swiss. It is intuitive, logical and orderly.


This benefit goes beyond the eligible registrants. The effect of the controlled use of the .swiss TLD is beneficial to all members of the Swiss community, whether or not that member is eligible to register a .swiss domain name. Moreover, it is beneficial to all internet users by providing trusted content under the .swiss TLD.


The word “Swiss” means “of or relating to Switzerland or its people”.
The well-established connotation of the TLD string “.swiss” (which refers directly to Switzerland) enables registrants to communicate with end-users in a way that demonstrates their qualification and commitment to the community. An eligible registrant will have a significantly higher likelihood of successfully registering a given domain under .swiss because the potential of contention is substantially lower than in the case of less-specific TLDs.


The concept of “Swiss quality” is one of the emanations of “Swiss” as an indication of origin or source. Members of the Swiss community at large, producers of Swiss products and providers of Swiss services – together with the consumers and users of those products and services – share a common interest in the trustworthiness of “Swiss” as a quality label. With the implementation of appropriate policy, the .swiss TLD supports efforts to preserve and enhance the “Swiss quality” label.


The ability to design and develop a planned portion of the name space creates a web of predictable and memorable names that will facilitate access to key resources for users. Predictability relates both to the choice of the name and to the content that the user may expect from a name corresponding to a certain pattern.


As a result of the planned nature of the name space, registered names will generally be highly predictable and memorable. The launch process and the community nexus compliance program are designed to achieve a high degree of relevance of .swiss domain names for Switzerland. The focus on Switzerland facilitates clear and easy communications to and from, as well as within, the Swiss community. Along with a policy providing strong assurances of legitimate use and intellectual property protection, the planned name space portion benefits national and international trademark holders as well as national and international Internet users.

Answers to enumerated question points:

i. The goal of .swiss is to serve the needs of the Swiss community, with a focus on controlled and curated designations as a specialty. Service levels will match or exceed the high end of currently existing TLDs. The Swiss Confederation will build and vigorously defend the reputation of .swiss as an orderly and progressive TLD for the Swiss community.

ii. As a name space specific to a sovereign country with close to 8 million inhabitants and an economy that heavily depends on exports related to the concept of Swiss quality, the .swiss TLD provides registrants and end-users with a trustworthy space for more information and greater choice.


The .swiss TLD offers logical alternatives to the existing competitive landscape. More choices for registrants and end-users result in greater competition. The .swiss TLD is naturally differentiated from other TLDs by its scope, governance model and intrinsic meaning.


The proactive and structured development of the name space greatly enhances the potential for innovation. The process involves calls for proposals for purpose-built localized services based on designated portions of the .swiss name space. These innovations are ultimately for the benefit of the Swiss community and the advancement of the global Internet.

iii. Compared to most existing TLDs, the .swiss user experience will greatly enhance predictability and memorability of domain names.

The clarity and recognition value of .swiss is significantly higher than that of .ch, the ccTLD of Switzerland. While .ch is well-understood within Switzerland (because the Swiss ISO-3166 alpha-2 code CH is based on the traditionally-used Latin expression “Confoederatio Helvetica” meaning Swiss Confederation), it is often confused outside the country with China, for example. Moreover, a .ch domain name may be registered by anyone anywhere, with no relation to Switzerland required. With its community-based registration policy, the .swiss TLD is therefore complementary to .ch and creates new opportunities for the Swiss community. And no one is confused with the meaning of “Swiss.”

The community-based focus, orderly development process and strong intellectual property support provide end-users with a significantly higher probability of finding what they are looking for under the names they would intuitively use. Users will have greater comfort on the context of naming variants: in key portions of the .swiss name space, alternative names and variants (redirected to the canonical forms) will be systematically activated. Users in the Swiss community will become accustomed to the predictability of .swiss domain names. Given the stringent validation, compliance and enforcement programs, typo-squatting, robotized pay-per-click traps or domain-for-sale pages will be eliminated under the .swiss TLD.

iv. A key purpose of the .swiss TLD is to help promote quality products and services by ensuring legitimate use of “.swiss” as a quality label. The validation, compliance and enforcement methods will match this requirement. Pre-validation will be used where justified and as long as necessary, along with other appropriate methods designed to achieve the objective of effectiveness and efficiency.


Validation and compliance measures go beyond trademark rights and community nexus in that validators will ascertain that a registrant’s brand or item referred to in the domain is generally accepted as truly representative of Switzerland (see Response to Question 20(e)). For those domains that can be construed to represent a category of products or services, validation ensures that each .swiss domain serves the role of an ambassador of Swiss quality.

The validation and compliance approach will regularly be reassessed and adapted to current needs based on experience and audit findings.

As all domains are validated and subject to a strict compliance and enforcement program, the .swiss TLD will start with relatively few domains, but will be free from abusive registrations.

v. The protection of privacy and confidential information of registrants and users will comply with Swiss law. Within the bounds of applicable regulations, the registry will implement anti-data mining measures by way of rate limitation, authenticated access or white-listing⁄black-listing, as well as tools to prevent unauthorized recourse to repetitive automated access.



To help achieve the goals of the TLD, the .swiss TLD will implement outreach and communication programs specifically adapted to each phase of its introduction.


The pre-launch phase will involve calls for projects by innovators and pioneer users. Such projects will foster the intuitive usability of the .swiss TLD with a focus on the needs of the Swiss community. Once these domain names are active, they become an outreach mechanism in their own right because they establish the touch-and-feel of the .swiss TLD in the minds of end-users.


The launch phase will involve outreach mechanisms that specifically target participation by the Swiss public authorities, public service providers, private sector stakeholders (including trademark holders) and other relevant actors.
Throughout the launch phase (as well as at any time thereafter), targeted invitations such as promotion codes distributed through community-specific channels will be a form of outreach available. They will also constitute a low-cost method to achieve community nexus and to prevent abusive registrations.

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