According to a blog post by the CEO of ICANN Fadi Chehadé, he and Akram Attalah will “personally oversee the whole new gTLD program until the 1st new gTLD is delegated.

This comes only days after Kurt Pritz who was heading up the new gTLD program resigned from ICANN due to a still undisclosed conflict of interest.

The rest of the blog post was on his meeting he had this past week on the Trademark Clearinghouse and its associated rights protection mechanisms.

Its clear from the post that the both the Trademark Clearinghouse and its associated rights protection mechanisms for new gTLD’s are still not settled.

“”We will have follow-up informational calls in November with the group to do three things.

(1) Review any additional feedback from the stakeholder groups,

(2) Convey staff’s view on a path forward on some or all elements of the strawman solution, and

(3) Convey additional details on the Trademark Clearinghouse contracts.””

We are now firmly focused on moving forward with Trademark Clearinghouse implementation to ensure that the New gTLD Program is launched in accordance with our targets.”

Next, I will focus on URS and RAA.””