Domain name developments from Com Laude

Here is the spring edition of Com Laude's newsletter [PDF].

Topic's covered include: 

• New gTLDs: the road ahead
• ccTLD updates from Australia to the UK
• The URS and the Trademark Clearinghouse explained

Excerpts:

New gTLD overview

In April 2012, ICANN received 1930 applications for 1409 unique character strings, of which 116 were IDNs (in scripts other than ASCII such as Arabic or Cyrillic); 899 of these applications were for keywords (meaning descriptive terms) applied for by investors; 637 or 33% were for company or brand names; 255 or 13% were keywords applied for by brand owners (Walmart and Safeway both applied for.grocery); and 139 or 7% were for community or geographic terms (.lat; .paris).

Application for a 10 year licence to operate a gTLD registry, with a presumption of renewal, cost $185,000. Any incorporated organisation could apply for any string, except those which

appeared on ICANN’s list of reserved names and the ISO3166 A and B lists of country codes and protected geographic terms. There were no restrictions on industry leaders applying for

industry terms or investors seeking to run a registry targeted at a regulated sector. There was no public interest test. Each application (numbering in the region of 250 pages) is being evaluated on operational, financial and technical grounds and has to score 30 marks or more out of 41 to pass. Each applicant had to submit to background checks. A Letter of Credit to the value of three years of emergency registry operation was required as well as a contract with an Escrow Provider. Most applicants selected as their Registry Service Provider a proven

operator of gTLD or ccTLD systems. Where two or more applicants have applied for the same string, the mechanism of last resort if the applicants cannot find a solution amongst themselves is an ICANN sponsored winner-takes-all auction. The order in which applications are processed was decided by a Prioritisation Draw held in Los Angeles in December 2012:

IDN applications were batched first, then ASCII applications.

Trademark Clearinghouse update

On 26 March 2013, the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH) finally began accepting trademark data for validation. The TMCH is a platform for cost effective rights protection in the new gTLD space, which will allow trademark owners to deposit their mark information into one centrally managed database for one fee. 

Trademarks successfully submitted to the TMCH can be used, subject to proof of use requirements, to participate in all new gTLD Sunrises (a 30 day period when trademark owners can apply to a registry to obtain a domain name matching its trademark) and the Trademark Claims service (a 90 day period following Sunrise where trademark owners are notified via the TMCH of any domain registrations in new gTLDs that match their marks).

The technical system is still being developed and is targeted to roll out by 1 July 2013. ICANN also revealed that they have agreed on a one off charge of $5,000 per gTLD for registries to

connect to the TMCH. This is significantly less than the figures that were suggested originally (ranging from $10-15,000), and is partly due to an ICANN subsidy of $400,000 which they

will pay to the TMCH to offset some of the potential cost for the registries. It still nets Deloitte and IBM a cool $7.5m for a service that is incomplete and six months late.

In addition, a $0.30 fee will be charged to registries per domain registration during the Sunrise and Claims periods.


Contact info@comlaude.com or +44 (0)20 7421 8250 for more information. 

Com Laude offers corporate domain name management and online trademark protection for corporations worldwide. In addition, Com Laude offers the advice brand owners need in order to formulate a sharp strategy with regard to domain name registration in all the new gTLDs at the second level.