Transition of Registry upon Termination of Agreement Upon expiration of the Term pursuant to Section 4.1 or Section 4.2 or any termination of this Agreement pursuant to Section 4.3 or Section 4.4, Registry Operator shall provide ICANN or any successor registry operator that may be designated by ICANN for the TLD in accordance with this Section 4.5 with all data (including the data escrowed in accordance with Section 2.3) regarding operations of the registry for the TLD necessary to maintain operations and registry functions that may be reasonably requested by ICANN or such successor registry operator. After consultation with Registry Operator, ICANN shall determine whether or not to transition operation of the TLD to a successor registry operator in its sole discretion and in conformance with the Registry Transition Process; provided, however, that (i) ICANN will take into consideration any intellectual property rights of Registry Operator (as communicated to ICANN by Registry Operator) in determining whether to transition operation of the TLD to a successor registry operator and (ii) if Registry Operator demonstrates to ICANN’s reasonable satisfaction that (A) all domain name registrations in the TLD are registered to, and maintained by, Registry Operator or its Affiliates for their exclusive use, (B) Registry Operator does not sell, distribute or transfer control or use of any registrations in the TLD to any third party that is not an Affiliate of Registry Operator, and (C) transitioning operation of the TLD is not necessary to protect the public interest, then ICANN may not transition operation of the TLD to a successor registry operator upon the expiration or termination of this Agreement without the consent of Registry Operator (which shall not be unreasonably withheld, conditioned or delayed). For the avoidance of doubt, the foregoing sentence shall not prohibit ICANN from delegating the TLD pursuant to a future application process for the delegation of top-‐level domains, subject to any processes and objection procedures instituted by ICANN in connection with such application process intended to protect the rights of third parties. Registry Operator agrees that ICANN may make any changes it deems necessary to the IANA database for DNS and WHOIS records with respect to the TLD in the event of a transition of the TLD pursuant to this Section 4.5. In addition, ICANN or its designee shall retain and may enforce its rights under the Continued Operations Instrument for the maintenance and operation of the TLD, regardless of the reason for termination or expiration of this Agreement.
