Latest news of the domain name industry

Recent Posts

First dot-brand gTLD calls it quits

Kevin Murphy, October 9, 2015, 19:09:29 (UTC), Domain Registries

The South Korean industrial conglomerate Doosan has decided to formally abandon its new dot-brand gTLD, the first to do so.
The news was announced by ICANN this evening, as part of the launch of a new web page for tracking gTLD contract termination requests.
Doosan is a bloody big company with multiple billions of annual revenue, in no danger of going out of business any time soon, so it seems the termination is simply due to a lack of interest.
The .doosan gTLD is not subject to the dot-brand provisions in Specification 13 — it actually signed its contract a week or so before Spec 13 was finalized — but ICANN has determined that the string should not be transitioned to a new registry.
Intellectual property rights and the fact that nobody else owns any .doosan names figured heavily in the decision.
Even though Doosan signed its Registry Agreement in April 2014, got delegated a year ago, and has been available to use since mid-March, the company never created any domains other than the obligatory nic.doosan (which no longer resolves for me).
The termination is subject to public comment until November 9.



Tagged: , , ,

Comments (6)

  1. JSL says:

    Do you expect more .brand to follow suit

    • Kevin Murphy says:

      Yup.

    • Rubens Kuhl says:

      “Free Puppy” effect, as said before by Jim Prendergast; IP lawyers got this gTLD to the company using only outside consultants and providers, now IT and Marketing got a “free puppy” they have to take care for, run, pay and figure out what to do.

      • Kevin Murphy says:

        Awfully kind of all those lawyers and consultants to work pro bono.

        • Jim Prendergast says:

          Let me put a finer point on it – yes there was certainly an outside sales push by some to existing and new clients but there were also quite a number of companies where their internal counsel came to this decision, with no outside influence. (Ok maybe the ICANN Global Awareness Campaign had some influence ;).)
          They had no idea what would happen in this round as did no one else. Would my competition secure theirs and we are left behind? Would another company with the same name get it and not us? Can this be a game changer? All valid questions at that time.
          Once secured by legal, it gets handed to a business unit and they have to make a go of it. That includes paying for it.
          As we are nearing the end of budget cycles for FY16 for many companies, I expect to see more of these terminations. Money is not in the budget for this going forward. Best place to look are those that waited to sign contracts right before the extended deadline of July 2015.

        • Rubens Kuhl says:

          Free as in this came out of IP protection budget so far, but now the BU has to take care of it.

Add Your Comment