Verisign to apply for a dozen new gTLDs

Verisign plans to apply to ICANN for about 12 new generic top-level domains, according to the executive in charge of registry services.

“We intend to do about 12. Most of those will be transliterations of .com,” senior vice president Pat Kane said on the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call yesterday.

This does not mark a significant change of strategy – the company has been open about its intention to apply for internationalized domain name variants of .com for over a year – but I believe it’s the first time it’s put a number on it.

It will be interesting to see which gTLDs – if any – Verisign will go for which are not .com IDNs.

My view is that it would make more sense for the company to apply for potentially high-volume .com competitors, such as .web or .blog. It has the capacity, the channel and the cash.

Smaller niche gTLDs may not be worth the distraction and risk, and would be better suited to dedicated registries that can concentrate on more focused marketing.

In any event, we’re going to see some major consolidation in the new gTLD space four or five years from now, and Verisign could well vacuum up cash-making registries at that time.

CEO Jim Bidzos also said on the call that Verisign has been retained to provide the registry for “several” dot-brand applications, but that it will not see any material revenue until 2013.

The major event for 2012, he noted, is the renewal of the .com Registry Agreement with ICANN, which expires at the end of November.

Verisign is already “engaging” with ICANN on this, Bidzos said.

This contract will be posted for public comment and sent to the US Department of Commerce for approval.

I’m expecting controversy, particularly if the contract continues to allow Verisign to increase prices.

It’s going to be harder for Verisign to argue that it needs the extra cash to invest in its infrastructure if it’s also leveraging that infrastructure to win lucrative dot-brand contracts.

3 Comments Tagged: .com, dot-brand, ICANN, idns, new gTLDs, verisign

Manwin files its first cybersquatting complaint

Manwin Licensing, the company currently suing ICANN and ICM Registry claiming .xxx breaks US competition law, has filed its first cybersquatting complaint using the UDRP.

It’s over a .com domain, pornhubarchive.com (don’t go there, not only is it NSFW but it also looks like it panders to some very dubious tastes), which Manwin thinks infringes on its rights to the PornHub name

The domain is registered to a Russian, while pornhub.com itself is protected by Whois privacy.

There’s a certain irony here. PornHub is a “tube” site that allows users to upload content and has itself come under fire for violating intellectual property rights in the past.

It was sued by the the porn production company Pink Visual for copyright infringement in 2010.

Comment Tagged: cybersquatting, manwin, pornhub, pornhubarchive.com, udrp

ICANN tells Congressmen to chillax

ICANN senior vice president Kurt Pritz has replied in writing to great big list of questions posed by US Congressmen following the two hearings into new gTLDs last month.

The answers do what the format of the Congressional hearings made impossible – provide a detailed explanation, with links, of why ICANN is doing what it’s doing.

The 27-page letter (pdf), which addresses questions posed by Reps. Waxman, Eshoo and Dingell, goes over some ground you may find very familiar, if you’ve been paying attention.

These are some of the questions and answers I found particularly interesting.

Why are you doing this?

Pritz gives an overview of the convoluted ICANN process responsible for conceiving, creating and honing the new gTLD program over the last few years.

It explains, for example, that the original GNSO Council vote, which set the wheels in motion back in late 2007, was 19-1 in favor of introducing new gTLDs.

The “lone dissenting vote”, Pritz notes, was cast by a Non-Commercial Users Constituency member – it was Robin Gross of IP Justice – who felt the program had too many restrictions.

The letter does not mention that three Council members – one from the Intellectual Property Constituency and two more from the NCUC – abstained from the vote.

Why aren’t the trademark protection mechanisms finished yet?

The main concern here is the Trademark Clearinghouse.

New gTLD applicants will not find out how the Clearinghouse will operate until March at the earliest, which is cutting it fine considering the deadline for registering as an applicant is March 29.

Pritz, however, tells the Congressmen that applicants have known all they need to know about the Clearinghouse since ICANN approved the program’s launch last June.

The Clearinghouse is a detail that ideally should have been sorted out before the program launched, but I don’t believe it’s the foremost concern for most applicants or trademark owners.

The unresolved detail nobody seems to be asking about is the cost of a Uniform Rapid Suspension complaint, the mechanism to quickly take down infringing second-level domain names.

ICANN has said that it expects the price of URS – which involves paying an intellectual property lawyer to preside over the case – to be $300 to $500, but I don’t know anyone who believes that this will be possible.

Indeed, one of the questions asked by Rep. Waxman starts with the premise “Leading providers under Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) have complained that current fees collected are inadequate to cover the costs of retaining qualified trademark attorneys.”

UDRP fees usually start at around $1,000, double what ICANN expects the URS – which I don’t think is going to be a heck of a lot simpler for arbitration panels to process – to cost trademark owners.

Why isn’t the Trademark Claims service permanent?

The Trademark Claims service is a mandatory trademark protection mechanism. One of its functions is to alert trademark holders when somebody tries to register their mark in a new gTLD.

It’s only mandatory for the first 60 days following the launch of a new gTLD, but I’m in agreement with the IP community here – in an ideal world, it would be permanent.

However, commercial services already exist that do pretty much the same thing, and ICANN doesn’t want to anoint a monopoly provider to start competing with its stakeholders. As Pritz put it:

“IP Watch” services are already provided by private firms, and it was not necessary for the rights protection mechanisms specific to the New gTLD Program to compete with those ongoing watch services already available.

In other words, brands are going to have to carry on paying if they want the ongoing benefits of an infringement notification service in new gTLDs.

When’s the second round?

Nothing new here. Pritz explains why the date for the second round has not been named yet.

Essentially, it’s a combination of not knowing how big the first round is going to be and not knowing how long it will take to conduct the two (or three) post-first-round reviews that ICANN has promised to the Governmental Advisory Committee.

I tackle the issue of second-round timing in considerable detail on DomainIncite PRO. My feeling is 2015.

On Whois verification

Pritz reiterates what ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom told the Department of Commerce last week: ICANN expects that many registrars will start to verify their customers’ Whois data this year.

ICANN is currently talking to registrars about a new Registrar Accreditation Agreement that would mandate some unspecified degree of Whois verification.

This issue is at the top of the law enforcement wish list, and it was taken up with gusto by the Governmental Advisory Committee at the Dakar meeting in October.

Pritz wrote:

ICANN is currently in negotiations with its accredited registrars over amendments to the Registrar Accreditation Agreement. ICANN is negotiating amendments regarding to the verification of Whois data, and expects its accredited registrars to take action to meet the rising call for verification of data. ICANN expects that the RAA will incorporate – for the first time – Registrar commitments to verify Whois data.

He said ICANN expects to post the amendments for comment before the Costa Rica meeting in mid-March, and the measures would be in place before the first new gTLDs launch in 2013.

I’ve heard from a few registrars with knowledge of these talks that Whois verification mandates may be far from a dead-cert in the new RAA.

But by publicly stating to government, twice now, that Whois verification is expected, the registrars are under increased pressure to make it happen.

IF Whois verification is not among the RAA amendments, expect the registrars to get another dressing down from the GAC at the Costa Rica meeting this March.

On the other hand, ICANN has arguably handed them some negotiating leverage when it comes to extracting concessions, such as reduced fees.

The registrars were prodded into these talks with the GAC stick, the big question now is what kind of carrots they will be offered to adopt an RAA that will certainly raise their costs.

ICANN expects to post the proposed RAA changes for public comment by February 20.

3 Comments Tagged: congress, ICANN, new glds, raa, trademark claims, trademark clearinghouse, uniform rapid suspension, urs, whois

Sedari wins .moscow contract

Registry services start-up Sedari has won a deal to support for an application for the .moscow and .МОСКВА generic top-level domains.

The deal is with the non-profit Foundation for Assistance for Internet Technologies and Infrastructure Development, which is handling Moscow’s official bid.

It’s Sedari’s first contract with a city gTLD bid, according to the company.

FAITID describes the company as its “strategic international partner”, chosen to help out with the application due to its expertise with all things ICANN.

RU-Center, the largest Russian registrar, is still its key partner in Russia.

Comment Tagged: .moscow, .МОСКВА, faitid, ICANN, new gTLDs, ru-center, sedari

Ombudsman dealing with new gTLDs complaint

ICANN Ombudsman Chris LaHatte is investigating a complaint related to the new generic top-level domains program.

Speaking to DI today, LaHatte declined to disclose the nature of the complaint or the identity of the complainant, but said he hoped to have the case resolved in a few weeks.

He may publish an official report about the investigation, he said. This would be the first such report to emerge from the Ombudsman’s office since October 2009.

The often-overlooked Ombudsman is not mentioned at all in the Applicant Guidebook, but it is an avenue open to applicants who believe they’ve been treated unfairly.

LaHatte said it’s “unlikely but conceivable” that he will receive complaints about unfair behavior when applications start being processed – and rejected – later this year.

The Ombudsman’s job is to look into allegations of unfairness in ICANN staff actions or the decisions of its board of directors.

But LaHatte said he believes he would be able to also handle complaints about the program’s outside evaluators, if applicants believe they have been treated unfairly.

“There will be some people who prefer to litigate and some who would prefer to come to me,” he said. “The message I would like to send to the community is that my door is always open.”

But he warned that the Ombudsman is not a “court of appeal” for applicants who simply disagree with adverse decisions.

The Ombudsman job has in the past been criticized for being relatively toothless – the role answers to the ICANN board and has no direct power other than the ability to make recommendations.

LaHatte characterized his ability to effect change as a “moral persuasion”.

He said he’s received 23 complaints so far in January, already double what his predecessor received per month, but many of these will be out his jurisdiction — cases of ICANN being blamed for domain theft or a registrar problem, for example.

Comment Tagged: ICANN, new gTLDs, Ombudsman