The 53rd international meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) formally concluded on Thursday, June 25, 2015, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. As always, the ICANN community discussed several high-profile topics during the meeting, all of which are relevant to registry operators, new generic top-level domain (gTLD) applicants and brand owners alike, including: the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) stewardship transition and ICANN accountability issues; new gTLD subsequent rounds; privacy and proxy service accreditation issues; ICANN contractual compliance issues; geographic names issues; and possible uses for new gTLD auction funds. Our new gTLD team has closely examined developments at the meeting and distilled the following high-level takeaways on these subjects, which have continued to blossom and garner further attention since the meeting.

ms