In his presentation to ICANN's GAC (Government Advisory Committee), ICANN Senior Vice President Kurt Pritz indicated that root scaling and economic study issues were the main ones remaining to be solved before a final Applicant Guidebook could be published.

His presentation was made today in Brussels, in the run-up to ICANN's 38th international meeting which starts on Monday June 21. The GAC and the GNSO (Generic Names Supporting Organisation – the policy-making body for gTLDs) traditionally hold working sessions during the weekend before an ICANN meeting.

Pritz went on to say that if the aforementioned issues can be resolved in the coming months, the Board could be in a position to approve the final guidebook in December. Presumably, that would require the final guidebook to be published several weeks before the December ICANN meeting in Cartagena so that there would be time for public comment before the Board came to vote on it.

As anticipated, the latest draft of the ICANN new gTLD Applicant Guidebook was published a few hours ago.

The new DAG includes models for trademark protection such as the Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) and the Trademark Clearinghouse (TM Clearinghouse). Other changes include a new proposal on registry-registrar separation for the registry agreement (the contract future registries will sign with ICANN), which is also the subject of ongoing work in the GNSO, ICANN's policy development body for generic TLDs (Top Level Domains).

DAGv4 will be at the centre of discussions in Brussels, from June 20 to 25, during ICANN's second international meeting of 2010.