18.1.1 Mission and Purpose of .BABY
Johnson & Johnson is a global leader engaged in the research, development, manufacture, and sale of a broad range of products and services in the healthcare field. Johnson & Johnson, in its 126th year of operation, had sales totaling over $65 billion in 2011, with a market capitalization of over $175 billion. Johnson & Johnson’s common stock has been traded on the New York Stock Exchange since 1944 under the symbol JNJ. Headquartered in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Johnson & Johnson has more than 250 operating companies conducting business in virtually all countries of the world, and employs approximately 118,000 people. Its products can be purchased worldwide and its content is accessible in multiple TLDs, including the .COM gTLD and .CN, .JP, .MX, and .UK ccTLDs.
Johnson & Johnson has a long-standing value-based history. The values that guide Johnson & Johnson’s decision making are spelled out in the company’s Credo, found at http:⁄⁄www.jnj.com⁄connect⁄about-jnj⁄jnj-credo⁄. Simply put, Our Credo challenges the company to put the needs and well-being of the people we serve first. For over 100 years, Johnson & Johnson has dedicated itself to understanding babies and their needs in order to provide mothers with safe, clinically proven, mild, and gentle products as well as baby-related health, wellness and skincare information and education. Millions of consumers depend on Baby Care franchise products, services, education, and information to address their babies’ needs, as evidenced by sales exceeding $2.34 billion in 2011. Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Care franchise has significant experience creating rich, information and educational content relating to baby health, wellness, education and products on such well-regarded web sites as baby.com, babycenter.com, and johnsonsbaby.com, amongst others.
Recognizing the potential dynamic evolution of the .BABY gTLD as a trusted namespace, Johnson & Johnson has decided to use a wholly-owned subsidiary, Johnson & Johnson Services, Inc. (“JJSI”), as the entity to file this application and bring the .BABY gTLD to market. Although JJSI is committed to moving forward with the .BABY gTLD application, it has not, at the time of filing this application, been able to fully vet and analyze all potential use case options.
The intended future mission and purpose of the .BABY gTLD is to serve as a trusted, hierarchical, and intuitive namespace provided by Johnson & Johnson and its qualified subsidiaries and affiliates for its consumers, healthcare professionals, and retailers with access to authoritative and verified baby-related health, wellness, and skincare information, education, content, and products.
18.1.2 Potential Business Models
JJSI is still analyzing potential use case options for the type of domain names that will be permitted for registration, in order to best develop a namespace for consumers, healthcare professionals, and retailers to access authoritative and verified baby-related information, content, and products. To facilitate the strategic and sustainable development of the .BABY gTLD, JJSI currently envisions a three-stage rollout:
1. Stage One
The current best thinking involves a business model in which a limited number of generic second-level domain names relevant to the baby care industry would initially be reserved⁄allocated to Johnson & Johnson and its qualified subsidiaries and affiliates. These domain names would provide a framework for a hierarchical and intuitive naming system for Internet users and consumers to more easily navigate the .BABY namespace. This initial use will provide Johnson & Johnson’s IT and security personnel the time to run a number of tests to ensure seamless and secure access to .BABY websites, and interoperability with various software and Web-based applications. The registration and use of these domain names are intended to be within the scope of section 1B of Specification 9, regarding the maintenance, operation, and purpose of the gTLD.
2. Stage Two
Once successful testing has been completed, Johnson & Johnson’s existing business units and select licensees and partners would be allowed to register domain names in the .BABY gTLD. At this time JJSI has not determined the identity of these select partners; however, any third party would be required to have a prior contractual agreement with Johnson & Johnson. This initial rollout guarantees that the identity and contact information for each .BABY domain name registrant will be verifiable based upon a preexisting business relationship. This allocation mechanism also minimizes startup and operational costs of the .BABY gTLD.
This initial allocation of domain names within the gTLD will allow JJSI to properly and sustainably develop the .BABY gTLD in such a manner as to ensure that the gTLD is viewed by Internet users as a trusted namespace for access to information regarding baby care health, wellness, education, information, products and⁄or services.
Given the fact that JJSI will have full control over the number of registrations in the .BABY gTLD namespace, JJSI is confident that the number of domain name registrations will be less than 10,000 in the first three years of operation.
It is in Stage Two that JJSI will evaluate expanding the operations of the .BABY gTLD to permit registration by other registrants outside of licensees and strategic partners. Should an assessment of its expansion strategy lead to a decision to extend registration rights to these other parties, this expansion is currently planned to take place during Stage Three, and likely after the first five years of operation.
3. Stage Three
Based on its experience with any expansion implemented in Stage Two, JJSI will assess whether its business plan and expansion strategy should be augmented by extending registration rights to a broader class of licensees, potential customers of Johnson & Johnson, and other third parties. However, it is the current intention that JJSI would require any class of future potential registrants to be in compliance with the restrictive membership⁄charter criteria mentioned above.
It is anticipated by JJSI that changes to the domain name industry, and particularly the impact of new .GENERIC gTLDs, will take at least five years to be realized and assessed. Any decision to expand the gTLDs beyond corporate, partner, and licensee use would likely be predicated by a Johnson & Johnson market analysis of both the market at the time for new gTLD registrations and consumer adoption of these new Internet addresses.
If Johnson & Johnson’s market analysis justifies this expansion before the sixth year of operation, JJSI would, if necessary, work with ICANN to secure an amended Continued Operations Instrument corresponding to a potential increase in registration volume above the current executed level. However, this scenario is unlikely because JJSI, in calculating its COI, has already exceeded the baseline guidance set forth by ICANN.
Notwithstanding this potential future expanded use of the .BABY name space beginning in the sixth year of operation, JJSI currently anticipates implementing a throttle mechanism to ensure that any proposed expanse is controlled and responsible. This proposed “time-out” mechanism is described in greater detail in the responses to the financial questions (Questions 45-50) of this application.
The potential use of the .BABY gTLD will also be driven by Johnson & Johnson’s future business strategies as identified in its annual report and investor filings, see http:⁄⁄www.investor.jnj.com⁄annual-reports.cfm.
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