Mission and Purpose of .LILLY Eli Lilly and Company ("Lilly") is a leading global pharmaceutical company that produces medicines that help people live longer, healthier, and more active lives. Across the globe, Lilly has developed productive alliances and partnerships that advance its capacity to... Read more
Mission and Purpose of .LILLY
Eli Lilly and Company ("Lilly") is a leading global pharmaceutical company that produces medicines that help people live longer, healthier, and more active lives. Across the globe, Lilly has developed productive alliances and partnerships that advance its capacity to develop innovative medicines at lower costs. Lilly's products are currently manufactured and distributed through facilities in the United States, Puerto Rico, and 11 other countries, and are sold in approximately 125 countries. The LILLY trademark has been registered by Lilly in over 135 countries. Lilly's pharmaceutical products include, but are not limited to, neuroscience products, endocrinology products, oncology products, cardiovascular products, and animal health products. Lilly's online content is accessible in the .COM gTLD and also in multiple ccTLDs, including .UK, .JP, .CA, and .NO.
The intended future mission and purpose of the .LILLY gTLD is to serve as a trusted and intuitive namespace provided by Lilly and its qualified subsidiaries and affiliates for its consumers and the public. Eli Lilly and Company is the designated entity to file this application and bring the .LILLY gTLD to market. However, Lilly is primarily filing this application in ICANN's first gTLD application round for precautionary reasons given the uncertainty regarding when ICANN will be opening a second round. Therefore, although Lilly is committed to moving forward with the .LILLY gTLD application, at the time of filing Lilly does not believe that there has been enough time or information available to fully analyze and evaluate all potential use case options.
Although ICANN has not specifically recognized a .BRAND gTLD specification in the Applicant Guidebook, it is widely anticipated within the brand-owner community that this will become a specialty subset of the new gTLDs. The .LILLY gTLD is planned as a .BRAND gTLD, with the goal of protecting Lilly's online presence and identity, providing a secure channel for online information and services, and offering a platform through which to potentially consolidate many of the online activities of Lilly.
Lilly intends to initially limit registration and use of domain names within the .LILLY gTLD to Lilly and its qualified subsidiaries and affiliates. This initial limited use will allow Lilly 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 are intended to exempt Lilly from its annual Code of Conduct Compliance requirements.
After Stage 3 (see below), Lilly will evaluate whether opportunities exist to carry out the business strategy for the .LILLY gTLD through expansion that continues the registry's sustainable operations through registrations to parties other than Lilly and its qualified subsidiaries and affiliates.
Lilly currently plans for a four-stage rollout for the .LILLY gTLD:
Stage 1: The initial stage of implementation of the gTLD will involve Lilly registering a limited number of .LILLY second-level domain names.
This initial use will provide Lilly's IT and security personnel an opportunity to run a number of tests to ensure seamless and secure access using the .LILLY 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 Lilly staff to coordinate with the internal and external staff responsible for the delegation and setup phases of the .LILLY gTLD to ensure a proper transition from delegation to full operation.
Stage 2: Once all testing has been successfully completed, Lilly will begin allocating domain names in .LILLY for more widespread internal corporate use. During this same period of time, Lilly will begin evaluating strategies to potentially migrate traffic away from its current patchwork network of second-level domain names, which are registered in a variety of TLDs, to the .LILLY gTLD.
It is in Stage 2 that Lilly will evaluate expanding the operations of the gTLD to permit registration by other registrants such as approved partners. 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 3. However, any expansion would be conditioned upon a review of Specification 9 (Registry Code of Conduct) set forth in the template Registry Agreement to ensure compliance with Lilly's business model.
Stage 3: Depending on the outcome of the evaluations undertaken in Stage 2, Lilly would subsequently implement an agreed-upon strategy to migrate Internet traffic away from the TLDs in which Lilly's domain names are currently registered, and toward the .LILLY gTLD. It is in this stage that Lilly also may implement its decision to expand registration rights to approved partners, conditioned 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 Lilly's existing domain name portfolio; internal analysis of marketing initiatives; and the fact that Lilly will have full control over the number of registrations in the .LILLY gTLD namespace, Lilly is confident that the number of domain name registrations will be less than 10,000 in the first five years of operation.
Stage 4: Based on its experience with any expansion implemented in Stage 3, Lilly will assess whether its business plan and expansion strategy should be augmented by extending registration rights to a broader class of approved partners, potentially including patients or consumers of Lilly. It is anticipated by Lilly that changes to the domain name industry, and particularly the impact of .BRAND gTLDs, will take at least five years from the date of delegation to be realized and assessed. Any decision to expand the gTLDs beyond corporate, qualified subsidiary/affiliate, and approved partner use will take into account this experience as well as the technical analysis of potential expansion.
Furthermore, Lilly will be analyzing and evaluating other gTLD applications for comparable well-known trademarks and company names, as well as general market adoption, to determine short- and long-term potential strategies and options for the .LILLY gTLD to more effectively serve and enhance Lilly's online strategy as a leading global pharmaceutical company.
The potential use of the .LILLY gTLD by Lilly and its various business segments will also be driven by Lilly's future business strategies as identified in its annual report and public financial information, see for example: http://investor.lilly.com/financials.cfm.
Utilizing current projections based upon Lilly's existing businesses, future business plans, current domain name portfolio, and other strategic factors, Lilly estimates that second-level domain name registrations will be in line with the projections set forth in the financial template provided in response to Question 46 of this application.
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