bugatti New gTLD Application
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New gTLD Application Submitted to ICANN by: Bugatti International SA
String: bugatti
Originally Posted: 13 June 2012
Application ID: 1-1004-9564
Applicant Information
- Full legal name
Bugatti International SA
- Address of the principal place of business
412F, ROUTE DʹESCH
LUXEMBOURG LUXEMBOURG 1030
LU
- Phone number
+33 3 88 04 56 00
- Fax number
+33 3 88 04 56 00
- If applicable, website or URL
http:⁄⁄www.bugatti.com
Primary Contact
6(a). Name
Mr. Thomas Schell
6(b). Title
Chief Digital Brand Management Officer
6(c). Address
6(d). Phone Number
+49 170 9129020
6(e). Fax Number
+49 7131 7999 999
6(f). Email Address
Secondary Contact
7(a). Name
Mr. Dirk Krischenowski
7(b). Title
Consultant
7(c). Address
7(d). Phone Number
+49 173 2339156
7(e). Fax Number
+49 30 4980 2527
7(f). Email Address
Proof of Legal Establishment
8(a). Legal form of the Applicant
S.A. is an abbreviation for a Société Anonyme corporation under Grand Duchy of Luxembourg Law
8(b). State the specific national or other jursidiction that defines the type of entity identified in 8(a).
The Societe Anonyme, abbreviated SA, or joint stock company, is formed under the “Law concerning commercial companies” from 1915 as amended (Article 23-101), http:⁄⁄www.legilux.public.lu⁄leg⁄textescoordonnes⁄guides⁄law_commercial_companies⁄
8(c). Attach evidence of the applicant's establishment.
Attachments are not displayed on this form.
9(a). If applying company is publicly traded, provide the exchange and symbol.
9(b). If the applying entity is a subsidiary, provide the parent company.
VOLKSWAGEN Aktiengesellschaft
9(c). If the applying entity is a joint venture, list all joint venture partners.
Applicant Background
11(a). Name(s) and position(s) of all directors
Guy Marie Harles Member of the of the Supervisory Board
Klaus Le Vrang Member of the of the Supervisory Board
Wolfgang Duerheimer Chairman of the Supervisory Board
11(b). Name(s) and position(s) of all officers and partners
Elke Rottenkolber Managing Director
Ingrid Vogel Managing Director
Jan-Henrik Lafrentz Managing Director
11(c). Name(s) and position(s) of all shareholders holding at least 15% of shares
VOLKSWAGEN Aktiengesellschaft Not Applicable
11(d). For an applying entity that does not have directors, officers, partners, or shareholders: Name(s) and position(s) of all individuals having legal or executive responsibility
Applied-for gTLD string
- Provide the applied-for gTLD string. If an IDN, provide the U-label.
bugatti
14(a). If an IDN, provide the A-label (beginning with "xn--").
14(b). If an IDN, provide the meaning or restatement of the string in English, that is, a description of the literal meaning of the string in the opinion of the applicant.
14(c). If an IDN, provide the language of the label (in English).
14(c). If an IDN, provide the language of the label (as referenced by ISO-639-1).
14(d). If an IDN, provide the script of the label (in English).
14(d). If an IDN, provide the script of the label (as referenced by ISO 15924).
14(e). If an IDN, list all code points contained in the U-label according to Unicode form.
15(a). If an IDN, Attach IDN Tables for the proposed registry.
Attachments are not displayed on this form.
15(b). Describe the process used for development of the IDN tables submitted, including consultations and sources used.
15(c). List any variant strings to the applied-for gTLD string according to the relevant IDN tables.
- Describe the applicant's efforts to ensure that there are no known operational or rendering problems concerning the applied-for gTLD string. If such issues are known, describe steps that will be taken to mitigate these issues in software and other applications.
The applicant anticipates the introduction of this TLD without operational or rendering problems. Based on a decade of experience launching and operating new TLDs, Afilias, the back-end provider of registry services for this TLD, is confident the launch and operation of this TLD presents no known challenges. The rationale for this opinion includes:
- The string is not complex and is represented in standard ASCII characters and follows relevant technical, operational and policy standards;
- The string length is within lengths currently supported in the root and by ubiquitous Internet programs such as web browsers and mail applications;
- There are no new standards required for the introduction of this TLD;
- No onerous requirements are being made on registrars, registrants or Internet users, and;
- The existing secure, stable and reliable Afilias SRS, DNS, WHOIS and supporting systems and staff are amply provisioned and prepared to meet the needs of this TLD.
- (OPTIONAL) Provide a representation of the label according to the International Phonetic Alphabet (http://www.langsci.ucl.ac.uk/ipa/).
Mission/Purpose
18(a). Describe the mission/purpose of your proposed gTLD.
The applicant, Bugatti International S.A. (S.A. is the French acronym for “Société Anonyme”: stock corporation), is a highly exclusive manufacturer of high-end sports cars and belongs to the second largest car manufacturer worldwide, the Volkswagen AG (AG is the German acronym for “Aktiengesellschaft”: stock corporation).
Bugatti has a history in car making for more than 100 years now. Today’s Bugatti International S.A., the successor of what has been initially founded 1909 in Alsatian Molsheim⁄France, has been reestablished on 7 July 1987 with its registered office and principal place of business in Luxembourg. The duration of the company is not restricted to a certain period. The object of the company is the development, production and sale of high-end sports cars.
Bugatti International S.A. is applying for the .BUGATTI top-level domain with the following MISSION and PURPOSE:
The .BUGATTI top-level domain is intended to serve the needs of its community and to benefit its community in terms of (a) differentiating, protecting and expanding its brand, (b) promoting its brand to the public and stakeholders, and (c) creating added value for its brand by enhanced consumer trust and reliability in the digital space.
The .BUGATTI top-level domain primarily has the purpose to supports the goals of Bugatti International S.A. in becoming the number one luxury and high-end sports car brand through superior financial strength and continuous growth as well as to achieve this via expertise, the best brand experience and an innovative and highly emotional product.
Bugatti International S.A. hereby states that according to Specification 9 Para. 6 in the New gTLD Agreement
(i) all domain names in the .BUGATTI top-level domain will be registered to, and maintained by, Bugatti International S.A. for its own exclusive use,
(ii) Bugatti International S.A. will not sell, distribute or transfer control or use of any registrations in the .BUGATTI top-level domain to any third party that is not an Affiliate of Bugatti International S.A., and
(iii) the application of the Code of Conduct to the .BUGATTI top-level domain is not necessary to protect the public interest.
18(b). How do you expect that your proposed gTLD will benefit registrants, Internet users, and others?
SPECIALITY
The .BUGATTI top-level-domain and its .BUGATTI domain names are dedicated and thereby specialized to create content, facilitate communication, information and distribution in connection with the brand BUGATTI between all parties involved in the business of Bugatti International S.A. worldwide.
SERVICE LEVEL
The most important service level of the .BUGATTI top-level-domain is the certainty for Internet users that all .BUGATTI domain names are exclusively registered and maintained by a trusted source, Bugatti International S.A. They will understand that only Bugatti International S.A. can register a domain name and all domain names which end on .BUGATTI are owned by Bugatti International S.A. and not by someone who just pretends to be BUGATTI International S.A.. Aim is that Internet users worldwide will be aware that domain names branded by the famous brand extension .BUGATTI are a hoard of security, stability and reliability. This will lead to awareness among Internet users that .BUGATTI is a trusted namespace on the Internet. Thus it will become a symbol of quality for Internet users worldwide.
REPUTATION
The .BUGATTI top-level-domain will be a namespace with support of the whole company, ranging from the manufacturing, design, administrative, human resources and sales to the marketing department and including the whole management team. It is the aim that such a secure namespace will quickly gain a substantial reputation among the global Internet community and BUGATTI customers.
COMPETITION
The .BUGATTI top-level domain will enhance competition in the global domain name business by introducing a dedicated namespace for the brand BUGATTI. Thus, the global car manufacturer industry faces the challenge to offer customers a secure, reliable and trustworthy namespace like BUGATTI does with .BUGATTI. Customers will have the expectation that highly exclusive car manufacturer brands will have an own namespace on the internet.
DIFFERENTIATION
The .BUGATTI top-level domain and its .BUGATTI domain names are clearly differentiated to existing top-level domains, especially due to their descriptive and branded nature which has a clear meaning and value to the targeted audience. Today Internet users cannot be sure that domain names incorporating BUGATTI under one of the existing TLDs really belong to BUGATTI or to someone else who is not affiliated with BUGATTI and merely tries to use this brand for his own purposes. Furthermore, only content which is issued by Bugatti International S.A. will be displayed under .BUGATTI domain names which differentiates BUGATTI from all other car manufacturers who will not own their respective brand as a top-level domain.
INNOVATION
The .BUGATTI top-level-domain and its .BUGATTI domain names are innovative due to the new category of TLDs which brands like BUGATTI are creating: “Only domain names with the ending .BUGATTI belong to BUGATTI”. The novelty is the creation of real trust and reliability for Internet users due to the fact that all .BUGATTI domain names are exclusively registered and maintained by a trustworthy source, Bugatti International S.A. Together with other brand top-level domain registries BUGATTI will work on creating awareness on this new namespace “category”.
Reaching out to customers in their original scripts with Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) in a consistent manner will be innovative. As of today not all domain names of BUGATTI follow a consistent syntax. The introduction of worldwide consistent domain names including all major European scripts (among others in French, Turkish and Danish), Arabic and Asian scripts among others will lead to an innovative and uniform way of communicating the BUGATTI brand worldwide.
Improved search rankings
Today users do not know whether to search for bugattiusa.com, bugatti-veyron.de or drive-veyron.com, or even bugattipartners.com. With a .BUGATTI top-level domain the user will experience a much more intuitive way of finding BUGATTI content on the Internet. They can either type in the exact domain name or use search engines to find the respective content. We expect that typing in the exact domain name will increase since many big companies are expected to operate their .brand. This will be supported by the search algorithms of big search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. The ranking algorithms results in their search engine incorporate, among many other elements, the top-level as well as the second-level in relation to the search. Therefore it is to be expected that search engines will incorporate the .brand top-level domain as being a relevant part of the search.
This effect has been forecasted by major IT researchers, among them Forrester: According to Forrester Research (Oct 2011) „Search engines will give authority to dot-brand TLDs. Search engines make their money from advertising, and search traffic comes from providing the most relevant, authoritative results to a user’s query. Since companies that get TLDs will have gone through a rigorous 8-12 month validation process, Google, Bing, and Yahoo will adjust their algorithms to give authority to these TLDs.“
Bugatti International S.A. is expecting that such a shift in search engine rankings will also positively affect the search engine positioning of the BUGATTI brand and the respective websites under .BUGATTI.
Umbrella brand strategy
With a .BUGATTI top-level domain BUGATTI will be able to setup an umbrella brand strategy with .BUGATTI acting as the umbrella and all BUGATTI product names and trademarks underneath on the second level. Users will then be able to connect the company name with the products even via domain names.
Enhanced trust and reliability
With the .BUGATTI top-level domain Bugatti International S.A. is expecting to deliver enhanced consumer trust and reliability in the digital space based on content and services under domain names with the extension .BUGATTI since there will be only one authoritative entity able to register domain names – Bugatti International S.A.
Intuitive Access
It is planned that intuitive domain name categories such as department.bugatti, product.bugatti, city.bugatti, services.bugatti will deliver due to their descriptive nature a much more intuitive access to the resources of BUGATTI for customers, business partners, employees and other stakeholders. Instead of clicking through the hierarchies of a website or searching on websites users will have a whole new level of direct access to the relevant content they have been searching for.
Beyond the provisions of the New gTLD Agreement the following policies are imposed:
General Policy
The Policy sets out the rules and regulations concerning the registration of domain names for second-level domains under .BUGATTI. In relation to registrants the policy is incorporated by reference in the registration agreement and in relation to the registrars by the Registry-Registrar Agreement (RAA). Further policies, such as sunrise policies, sunrise dispute resolution policy, a trademark claims service policy or an eligibility requirement dispute resolution policy will be implemented.
The top-level domain is intended to serve the needs of its community in terms of differentiating, protecting and expanding the brand, promoting the brand to the public and creating added value for the brand by enhanced consumer trust and reliability in the digital space.
In the following description, words beginning with capital letters will be defined in the Policies.
.BUGATTI Registration Policies Description
.BUGATTI is a community TLD as described in response to #20. The BUGATTI community are the three Bugatti sister companies Bugatti Automobiles S.A.S., Molsheim, France, Bugatti International S.A., Luxembourg, Luxembourg and Bugatti Engineering GmbH, Wolfsburg, Germany. The following description of the .BUGATTI policies contains a shortened excerpt of the intended policies:
1 Object and Scope
Description of the general object and scope of the TLD in accordance with response to #18 a..
The general Registration Policy sets out the rules and regulations concerning the registration of Domain Names for second level domain names under .BUGATTI.
2 Purpose
This section will describe the purpose of the TLD in accordance with the response to #18 a.
3 Allocation Phases
The roll-out of the TLD is anticipated to feature the following phases:
- Reservation of reserved names as detailed below
- Sunrise Period — the required period for trademark owners to secure their domains before availability to all eligible registrants. This phase will feature applications for domain names, verification of trademarks via Trademark Clearinghouse and a trademark verification agent.
- General Availability period — real-time registrations for eligible registrants. Trademark Claims Service will be in use for the first 60 days after General Availability applications open.
4 Priority Principle
Within each allocation phase a specific Domain Name shall be allocated for use to the eligible Applicant whose request has been received first by the Registry in the technically correct manner and complies with all applicable requirements.
5 Registrant Eligibility
Only Registry Operator shall be eligible to register Domain Names. Registry Operator verifies all domain name registrations upon registration and renewal.
6 Content and Use Restrictions
Domain Names are intended to be used for domain name based services (e.g. HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, email, website) in connection with products, services, activities and organizations of the BUGATTI Community.
With regard to the community character of the .BUGATTI TLD Domain Names shall, within six months following the date of registration and thereafter throughout the term of registration, be used either for a website displaying content strongly related to the Community (in particular the products or services offered by community members) or in any other corresponding manner (e. g. e-mail for Community members) having a similarly strong relation to the Community, its members or its purposes.
Domain names used as contemplated above may resolve directly to the relevant website or be forwarded or redirected to another domain name displaying content relevant to the Domain Name.
Registry Operator will not sell, distribute or transfer control or use of any registrations in the TLD to any third party other than an Affiliate of Registry Operator.
7 Name Selection Policies and Restrictions
Name Selection: With regard to the community character of the .BUGATTI TLD Domain Names must have a strong connection with products, services, activities, members or organizations of the BUGATTI Community. Domain Names shall comprise
- the names of Community members,
- trademarks, service marks, names or designations used for products and ⁄ or services offered by Community members, and⁄or
- strings, which in connection with the Top Level Domain create a nexus, an association or relation to the trademarks of communitiy members comprising the string BUGATTI or to the Community, its members, activities or purposes.
Domain names can only be registered on the second level. Upper and lower case characters do not differentiate domains. Domain names have a minimum of one and a maximum of 63 characters, must neither begin with, nor end with a hyphen, mus not include a space and must not contain hyphens in the third and fourth positions (except for A-Labels of IDN).
Details for IDN, in particular supported languages and ⁄ or scripts, codepoints, characters, variant and script mixing regulations are intended to be subject to separate IDN-Policies. Any requisite IDN-related policies required for the operation of this TLD will be introduced as required and in conjunction with other relevant ICANN policies. Please refer to response to #44 for further details.
8 Verification of Eligibility
Registry Operator verifies domain name registrations upon initial registration and renewal. Verification of eligibility will be effected by Review by Registry Operator, which may occur prior to or after registration of the Domain Name.
9 Proxy and Privacy
This section describes the requirements for proxy or privacy services.
Proxy or Privacy Services are not permissible.
10 Rights in Domain Names
The registration of a Domain Name by Registrant shall not give any rights in the Domain Name that survive the termination of the registration in relation to Registry Operator. Registrant is granted the revocable and terminable right to use the Domain Name in accordance with the applicable policies for the .BUGATTI TLD.
11 Reserved Names
Applicant intends to reserve all names required in accordance with the gTLD Agreement, in particular Specification 5 thereto. The list of reserved names will be published publicly before the Sunrise period begins.
12 Enforcement
In case of policy violations (including violation of eligibility criteria or community related restrictions) the following Enforcement Procedures apply:
* Notification of Policy Violation
Registry Operator maintains an email address as point of contact for information about potential violations of the Policy. If Registry Operator receives such notification or is informed otherwise of a potential violation of the Policy it will undertake the necessary steps to evaluate complaints and to ascertain any Policy violations.
* Interim Measures
During the notice period, Registry Operator may - without establishing any obligation to do so or liability to any other party - suspend, cancel, delete or otherwise alter or amend the respective Domain Name registration as deemed appropriate to reduce the effect of the Policy violation.
* Opportunity to Correct or Respond
If reasonable, Registry Operator notifies the parties involved in the alleged Policy violation and gives them the opportunity to remedy the violation or to respond to the allegations. Registrant and the Registrar of record for the Domain Name shall be copied on all such requests and notices where reasonably practical and appropriate. Notice periods should be oriented to the following scheme:
(1) If the registration data appears to be incorrect or incomplete, Registrant shall be given a thirty (30) days’ notice period to correct such data
(2) In other cases of a Policy violation the infringer shall be given a fifteen (15) days’ notice period to comply with the relevant Policy
(3) If the violation constitutes an imminent threat to third parties` rights, the stability of the domain name system or the registry or if the violation cannot be remedied a notice period may be inappropriate.
* Decision of Registry Operator
Registry Operator decides whether a particular issue is of concern. If Registry Operator concludes that the Registration or use of the Domain Name violates the Policy Registry Operator may take the appropriate measures, in particular the measures specified in Section 14.
If Registry Operator receives no or merely insufficient response within the notice period Registry Operator may revoke the Domain Name registration without any further notice.
Decisions of the Registry Operator are subject to the right of the concerned party to judicial review at the competent courts.
13 Dispute Resolution
Registry Operator is committed to ensure the compliance of Registrations with the conditions set forth in this policy and to protect the intellectual property of third parties. The Dispute Resolution Policies include Uniform Domain Name Dispute Policy (UDRP), Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS), Trademark Post Delegation Dispute Resolution Policy (Trademark PDDRP), Registry Restrictions Dispute Resolution Policy (RRDRP) and an Eligibility Requirements Dispute Resolution Policy (ERDRP). The ERDRP will give third parties the opportunity to challenge registrations that do not fulfil the eligibility requirements as specified above. The only remedy under ERDRP shall be cancellation of the domain name. Please refer to response to #29 for further details on rights protection mechanisms.
14 Reservation of Rights, Revocation
This section describes the general rights of the Registry to handle non-fulfillment of the eligibility requirements and other breaches of policies or laws. Registry Operator shall have the right to suspend, reject, suspend, cancel, revoke or transfer any application for or registration of a Domain Name if it deems necessary in its sole discretion to enforce (1) this Policy, including its eligibility criteria, name selection policies or restrictions and use restrictions, in particular decisions under the enforcement regulations as described above (2) the Abuse Policy and⁄or (3) other applicable Policies.
15 Role of Registrars
This section describes the cooperation with ICANN accredited registrars in general. Applicants for a Domain Name must select a Registrar that is accredited by Registry Operator who will interact with the Domain Name Registry System on behalf of the Applicant. Registrars are bound by the Registry-Registrar Agreement, incorporating this Policy. A List of the registrars offering the registration of Domain Names is provided on the Website of Registry Operator.
In addition the registration of domain names in the .BUGATTI TLD will follow the standard practices, procedures and policies Afilias currently has in place. This includes in particular
- domain registration polices (for example, grace periods, transfer policies, etc.) as defined in response #27;
- abuse prevention tools and policies, for example, measures to promote WHOIS accuracy and efforts to reduce phishing and pharming as detailed in our response #28.
v.
The WHOIS data of all .BUGATTI domains will be visible to the public, although a captcha module may prevent from automated inquiries. Bulk access to WHOIS data will not be allowed according to ICANN specifications. In addition BUGATTI International S.A. will establish an abuse point of contact. The .BUGATTI TLD will not offer or allow privacy of confidential information of registrants.
Bugatti International S.A. invests a multi-million EURO budget in the global promotion of its brand including communicating domain names on nearly all promotional materials.
In the future after the approval of .BUGATTI this marketing power will be used for the promotion of domain names with the extension .BUGATTI in order to create a quick uptake in awareness of the new .BUGATTI domain names worldwide.
18(c). What operating rules will you adopt to eliminate or minimize social costs?
All domain names will be administered by a specialized domain name team within Bugatti International S.A. This team, which also manages the BUGATTI domain portfolio will plan, define and designate after consulting with the relevant departments which .BUGATTI domain names will be used for which purposes and by whom within Bugatti International S.A. As a result the registration of each single .BUGATTI domain is the outcome of a defined process. The team has the authority to register, update and delete domain names and its records. Since all domain names are registered for Bugatti International S.A. as domain name owner transfers are not allowed. Multiple applications for a particular domain name will be resolved by internal processes within Bugatti International S.A. However the only eligible registrant is Bugatti International S.A.
ii.
Since all domain name are exclusively registered and maintained by Bugatti International S.A. there are no cost benefits.
iii.
Since all domain name are exclusively registered and maintained by Bugatti International S.A. only a single ICANN-accredited registrar will be used to register .BUGATTI domain names for a fixed price. Registration may be made for 1-10 years.