Updates to New gTLD Program Implementation

MARINA DEL REY, CA - During the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) meeting in Paris, France, ICANN staff made a commitment to release a paper describing the economic case for auctions as a tiebreaking mechanism for resolving contention among identical or confusingly similar applications for new gTLDs.

ICANN is making the Economic Case for Auctions in New gTLDs paper available so that the community can provide feedback on this element of the forthcoming implementation plan, a press release by ICANN stated.

The paper was prepared by ICANN's auction design consultant PowerAuctions LLC with support from ICANN staff. The paper notes that auctions as a tiebreaking mechanism accomplish a goal of allocative efficiency through a transparent, objective and scalable process for the resolution of gTLD applications.

This paper does not address specific details on how an auction process to resolve string contention may be conducted. These details will be provided as part of the larger information on new gTLD implementation to be presented to the community in the near future.

A public forum has been established at . Comments submitted to will be considered until September 7, 2008.