.aigo Domain

The intention of the aigo Digital Technology Co, Ltd. (ʺaigoʺ) in filing this application is to proactively protect the ownership of its "AIGO" trademark at the Internet Generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) name space, and to provide a trusted, hierarchical and intuitive namespace for businesses and consumers that use aigo's broad range of consumer electronic products.

The Aigo Digital Technology Co, Ltd.
The aigo brand is a trade name created by Beijing Huaqi Information Digital Technology Co. Ltd in 1993. The company designs and manufactures various consumer electronic products such as tablet PC, portable hard drive / storage, portable projector, digital camera, digital photo frames, digital camcorder, projector, MP4/5/6 multi-media players, ebook / readers, mobile phones, batteries, data security products and various computer peripherals and accessories. These products enjoy significant market shares and leadership in China as well as worldwide - with domination on portable devices (90% market share; No.1 in China), digital photography products (70% market share; No.1 in China) and recently handheld devices.
In recent years aigo has invested substantial resources on international branding. Today, the aigo mark is a nationally registered and protected mark in over 140 countries. Listed below is a representative sampling of the truly international footprint of the aigo brand:
- aigo's subsidiary aifly was the Official Language Training Services Provider of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, providing training to fifteen thousands of volunteers;
- aigo has partnered with the International Olympic Museum as its official tour guide system with the proprietary aigopen;
- aigo's F1 partnership with the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes Formula One team has been crucial in raising awareness of aigo in the European marketplace. aigo is McLaren's first Chinese partner in the world and the first time Chinese characters have appeared on an F1 car;
- In June 2009, aigo entered into a multi-million dollar sponsorship agreement with Manchester United, as its official portable media player, digital camera, and portable storage partner; and
- In January 2011, announced in CES 2011, aigo entered to a sponsorship agreement with Bryan Herta Autosport for the 2011 Indycar season. The deal will see aigo branding on the BHA Indycar at the Indianapolis 500 as well as other events throughout the year.
In addition to these international branding events, aigo's storage and recording solutions were tasked to provide equipment and installation in the No.6 and No. 7 ShenZhou Spacecraft missions (神州六号与神州七号). These recording devices were able to keep track of all the voice material that occurred during the entire space journey.
ICANN's new gTLD program offers aigo a great opportunity to demonstrate its position as an industry pioneer and a truly global enterprise. Mr. Feng personally attended the historical ICANN 41 meeting in Singapore and witnessed the approval of the New gTLD Program. The delegation of .AIGO TLD would elevate the brand value and consumer confidence in aigo as a leading Chinese brand while providing consumers a trusted, hierarchical and intuitive namespace for aigo's broad range of consumer electronic products.

Potential Business Models
The preservation of its brand is of paramount importance to aigo Space in all aspects of its operations, including and especially on the Internet. Operating the brand as a gTLD will likely be an important part of its digital strategy in the future. aigo will be analyzing and evaluating other .BRAND gTLD applications as well as general market adoption to determine short and long-term potential best-in-class use case options to most effectively serve and enhance aigo's online strategy as a global leader in consumer electronic products.
Although ICANN has not specifically recognized a .BRAND gTLD specification in the current round, it is widely anticipated in the brand community that this will become a specialty subset of gTLDs. The .AIGO TLD is intended to be one of those .BRAND gTLDs, with the goal of protecting aigo's online presence and identity, expanding its marketing and promotion efforts, providing a secure channel for online products and services.
aigo intends to initially limit registration and use of domain names within the .AIGO gTLD to aigo and its qualified affiliates. This initial limited use will allow aigo to establish its operations and achieve full sustainability. This limited distribution coupled with the other requirements set forth in Specification 9 of the Template Registry Agreement is intended to exempt aigo from its annual Code of Conduct Compliance requirements.
aigo currently plans a four-stage rollout for the .AIGO gTLD:
1. Stage One
The initial stage of implementation of the gTLD will involve aigo registering a limited number of .AIGO second-level domain names.
This initial use will provide aigo's IT and security personnel the time to run a number of tests to ensure seamless and secure access using the .AIGO gTLD domain names, interoperability with various software and Web-based applications, and unbroken and secure use of all names. This initial allocation will also allow the appropriate aigo staff to coordinate with the internal and external staff responsible for the application, delegation and setup phases of the .AIGO gTLD to ensure a proper transition from delegation to full operation.
2. Stage Two
Once all testing has been successfully completed, aigo will begin allocating domain names in .AIGO for more widespread internal corporate use. During this same period of time, aigo will begin evaluating strategies to potential migrate traffic away from its existing second-level domain names.
It is in Stage Two that aigo will evaluate expanding the operations of the gTLD to permit registration by other registrants such as licensees or other strategic parties. Should an assessment of its expansion strategy lead to a decision to extend registration rights to other parties, this expansion is currently planned to take place during Stage Three. However, any expansion would be conditioned upon a review of the Specification 9 (Registry Code of Conduct) set forth in the template registry agreement to ensure compliance with aigo's business model.
3. Stage Three
Depending upon the analysis of the evaluations undertaken in stage two, aigo may begin to implement the migration of Internet traffic away from aigo's legacy domain names, and toward the .AIGO gTLD. It is in this stage that aigo also may implement its decision to extend registration rights to licensees or strategic parties, depending upon compliance with Specification 9 as noted above. The dates of such expansion are subject to change depending upon business, strategic, and industry factors at the time.
After consideration of the following factors: analysis of aigo's existing domain name portfolio; internal analysis of marketing initiatives; and the fact that aigo will have full control over the number of registrations in the .AIGO gTLD namespace, aigo is confident that the number of domain name registrations will be less than 3,000 in the first three years of operation based upon its current business plan.
4. Stage Four
Based on its experience to the end of Year 3, and based on its experience with any expansion implemented in Stage Three, aigo will assess whether its business plan and any future expansion strategy to include a much larger universe of domain name registrants, e.g. individual consumers. However, it is anticipated by aigo that changes to the domain name industry, and particularly the impact of .BRAND gTLDs, will take several years to be realized and assessed. Therefore, any decision to expand the gTLDs beyond corporate, qualified subsidiary and affiliate, and licensee use, and to potential include end consumer user will take into account this experience as well as the technical analysis of potential expansion.×