Statement by Akram Atallah, COO
In recognition of the inconvenience caused by the temporary suspension of the TLD application system, ICANN will provide a full refund of the application fees paid by any new gTLD applicant that wishes to withdraw its application prior to publication of the list of applied-for new top-level domain names.
A resolution authorizing full refunds was adopted during a Board of Directors workshop in Amsterdam on Sunday, 6 May 2012.
We recognize that this represents an increase of only US $5000 over the refund that withdrawing applicants would otherwise receive, but we believe it is an important part of fulfilling our commitment to treat applicants fairly.
We regret the difficulties that we know the temporary suspension of TAS is causing.