Recent Posts
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- ICANN 79: anonymous trolls and undercover lawyers
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- Epik gets acquired again! The plot thickens…
- Airline gTLD crashes and burns
- First chunks of new gTLD Applicant Guidebook drop
- Epik to reveal its owners soon
- Another crypto firm to apply for a new gTLD
- Monster and Royce are NOT involved in Epik?!
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- ICANN picks its first ever Supreme Court
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- ICANN approves domain takedown rules
- Has Epik gone “woke”?
- First bits of new gTLD Applicant Guidebook expected next week
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- ICANN begs people to use its new Whois service
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- Over 50,000 .ai domains sold in three months
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- Registries and registrars vote ‘Yes’ to new DNS abuse rules
- ICANN predicts flattish 2025 for domain industry
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- ICANN drops the “man” from Ombudsman
- Have your say on police domain takedown powers
- Most registrars are shunning ICANN’s new Whois system
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- ICANN picks Istanbul for 2024 meeting
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- Google sells five-figure AI domain and six-figure .ing hack
- .blackfriday is still a bit rubbish
- Internet Naming Co acquires five more gTLDs
$41m auction loser tries to slam brakes on .shop
Lawyer-happy gTLD applicant Commercial Connect has put GMO Registry’s $41 million purchase of the new gTLD .shop in jeopardy by filing an appeal with ICANN.
On January 26 — the day before the .shop auction — the Connecticut-based company filed an Independent Review Process complaint with ICANN, asking a panel of judges to enjoin ICANN from delegating .shop or even signing a registry contract with GMO.
It’s applied for “emergency” relief. Its full IRP complaint has yet to be filed.
GMO won a seven-way ICANN auction for .shop last week, agreeing to pay $41.5 million into ICANN coffers.
The IRP news will not be particularly surprising for anyone who has followed the .shop contention set closely.
Commercial Connect has deployed pretty much every legal avenue available to it in order to win .shop, which had eight competing applications.
It applied as a “community” applicant, but unsurprisingly failed to meet the stringent criteria that a Community Priority Evaluation requires.
It scored a measly 5 out of the 16 available CPE points, missing the 14-point target.
The company also spunked goodness knows how much cash filing 21 formal objections against other gTLD applicants — ridiculous complaints that “.supply” or “.セール” or “.services” were “confusingly similar” to .shop.
It actually managed to win two of its string similarity challenges, when panelists apparently decided to write their judgments before their morning coffee had kicked in.
It was probable that .shopping and .通販 would be confused with .shop in the mind of the average internet user, these panelists decided.
The .通販 decision was thrown out when sanity prevailed, but the .shopping decision stood. Only a recent back-room deal between Uniregistry and Donuts prevented the .shop auction being a head-explodingly confusing mess.
Now, with its IRP, Commercial Connect is claiming that the whole CPE system goes against ICANN rules.
According to its initial complaint, the fact that the CPE adjudicator, the Economist Intelligence Unit, came up with its own supplemental “CPE Guidelines” means that the the CPE system is not “ICANN policy” and should therefore be disregarded.
At first glance, it seems weak. But I said the same about the DotConnectAfrica IRP case, which DCA won.
IRP panels have been known to be somewhat “activist” (not necessarily a bad thing) recently, so it’s hard to call which way they will swing in any specific case.
But it does seem quite possible that the emergency relief that Commercial Connect requests — that is, no .shop contract until the IRP is over — will be granted.
For GMO, that means it’s just spent $41.5 million on a gTLD it probably won’t be able to launch for well over a year.
It’s perhaps interesting that Commercial Connect doesn’t seem to make any reference in its IRP to its original 2000-round application for .shop.
If that comes up in future filings, it could open up an entirely new can of worms.
“It’s perhaps interesting that Commercial Connect doesn’t seem to make any reference in its IRP to its original 2000-round application for .shop.
If that comes up in future filings, it could open up an entirely new barrel of worms.”
There is an adage about keeping your best powder dry.
What on earth was I thinking with “barrel”? Corrected to “can”. Thanks. 😉
Commercial Connect seems to have much in common with another nutty applicant, but at least they did not apply for dot dotshop.
Here is how I picture them:
http://lighthousetiledesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/money-down-toilet.jpg
And I presume when winning the IRP doesn’t actually get them dotShop they will also emulate everyone’s favourite Looney Tune by trying to get a court order against ICANN.
Well, I hope GMO decides to sue Commercial Connect for commercial interference or something like that.
Which also could be thrown against any applicant that questioned CPE…