ICANN has temporarily banned “closed generic” gTLDs in response to Governmental Advisory Committee demands.

The ban, which may be lifted, affects at least 73 applications (probably dozens more) for dictionary-word strings that had been put forward with “single registrant” business models.

ICANN’s New gTLD Program Committee on Tuesday voted to prevent any applicant for a closed generic gTLD from signing a registry contract, pending further talks with the GAC.

In order to sign a registry agreement, applicants will have to agree to the following Public Interest Commitments:

1. Registry Operator will operate the TLD in a transparent manner consistent with general principles of openness and non-discrimination by establishing, publishing and adhering to clear registration policies.

2. Registry Operator of a “Generic String” TLD may not impose eligibility criteria for registering names in the TLD that limit registrations exclusively to a single person or entity and/or that person’s or entity’s “Affiliates” (as defined in Section 2.9(c) of the Registry Agreement). “Generic String” means a string consisting of a word or term that denominates or describes a general class of goods, services, groups, organizations or things, as opposed to distinguishing a specific brand of goods, services, groups, organizations or things from those of others.

The effect of this is that applications for closed generics are on hold until ICANN has figured out what exactly the GAC is trying to achieve with its advice, which emerged in its Beijing communique (pdf).

Closed generics have not to date been a specific category of gTLD. They’re basically bids like Symantec’s .antivirus, L’Oreal’s .beauty and Amazon’s .cloud, where the gTLD is not a “dot-brand” but every second-level domain would belong to the registry anyway.

The two main reasons the new gTLD program has allowed them so far are a) ICANN decided that coming up with definitions for categories of gTLD was too hard and prone to abuse, and b) ICANN didn’t want to overly restrict registries’ business models.

Apparently all it needed was a nudge from the GAC and a change of senior management to change its mind.

ICANN now has a definition of “generic”, which I believe is a first. To reiterate, it’s:

a string consisting of a word or term that denominates or describes a general class of goods, services, groups, organizations or things, as opposed to distinguishing a specific brand of goods, services, groups, organizations or things from those of others

If the proposed PIC stands after ICANN’s talks with the GAC, nobody will be able to operate a generic string as a single-registrant gTLD.

But there may be one massive loophole.

Let’s say Volkswagen had applied for .golf (it didn’t) as a single-registrant dot-brand gTLD.

In that context, “golf” is a word used to label one model of car, “distinguishing a specific brand of goods, services, groups, organizations or things from those of others”.

But the word “golf” is also indisputably “a word or term that denominates or describes a general class of goods, services, groups, organizations or things”.

So which use case would trump the other? Would Volkswagen be banned from using .golf as a dot-brand?

It’s not just hypothetical. There are live examples in the current round of single-registrant applications that are both generic terms in one industry and brands in others.

Apple’s application for .apple is the obvious one. While it’s hard to imagine apple farmers wanting a gTLD, we don’t yet know how crazy the gTLD landrush is going to get in future rounds.

What of Bond University’s application for .bond? It’s a brand in terms of further education, but a generic term for debt instruments in finance.

Boots’ application for .boots? A brand in the high street pharmacy game, a generic if you sell shoes. Google’s application for .chrome is a brand in browsers but a generic in metallurgy.

None of the examples given here (and there are many more) are on the GAC’s list of problematic closed generics, but as far as I can see they would all be affected by ICANN’s proposed PIC.

The affected applications are not dead yet, of course. ICANN could change its view and drop the new PIC requirement a few months from now after talking to the GAC.

But the applications do appear to be in limbo for now.