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Dot Registry applying for four US-only gTLDs

Kevin Murphy, June 4, 2012, 20:05:50 (UTC), Domain Registries

Dot Registry LLC, a new company to the domain name industry, has applied to ICANN for four company-themed gTLDs, saying it has the backing of US secretaries of state.
It’s going for .inc, .corp, .llc and .llp.
CEO Shaul Jolles says the plan is for all four to be restricted to US-registered companies, even though some other countries give their companies the same labels.
“While the extensions do exist in other countries, they do not have definitions similar to the entity classifications in the US,” Jolles said in an email.
“We will not offer registrations to companies not registered in the US,” he said. “We chose this option because we are able to easily verify business entity registration in the US.”
Dot Registry, which is using .us contractor Neustar as its registry services provider, says it has support from various US secretaries of state.
As we blogged in April, the president of the National Association of Secretaries of State wrote to ICANN to express reservations about these types of gTLD strings.
But Delaware Secretary of State Jeffrey Bullock indicated in a separate letter that Dot Registry’s propose regime of restrictions, which would manually match domains to company names, might be acceptable.
I’m still somewhat skeptical about the value of these kind of gTLDs. You can pretty much guarantee plenty of pointless defensive registrations, and the benefits seem fuzzy.
“The benefit of these strings is two-fold,” Jolles said. “For consumers it creates a level of reassurance and the ability to quickly ascertain if a company is legitimate or not.”
“From a company perspective it has simple benefits such as guaranteeing that you receive a domain name that matches your registered business name, increased consumer confidence which increases revenue, and a decreased possibility of business identity theft in a cyber setting,” he said.

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Comments (12)

  1. Tom G says:
    June 4, 2012 at 9:17 pm

    Competition in these strings for TLDH, an entity based in the British Virgin Islands which has also applied for U.S. business identifiers.

    Reply
  2. Michele says:
    June 4, 2012 at 10:40 pm

    I don’t see how any new TLD can be successful if they limit themselves like this. It’s not as if US companies are going to be clamouring for a .llc.
    Maybe I’ll be proven wrong..

    Reply
  3. Constantine Roussos (.MUSIC) says:
    June 4, 2012 at 10:54 pm

    I agree with Michele on this one. Will the appropriate state/gov U.S authorities in charge verify each domain with the exact match to the actual corporate name?

    Reply
  4. xo says:
    June 5, 2012 at 2:08 am

    what will happen when AAA Taxi LLC wants aaataxi.llc
    there’s only 50 different legally formed AAA Taxi LLCs, since you can incorporate an llc in 50 different states.

    Reply
    • Jim Smith (.WTF) says:
      June 5, 2012 at 3:18 am

      Could be very useful if they’re working with the secretaries of state to ensure legitimacy.

      Reply
      • John Berryhill says:
        June 5, 2012 at 3:21 pm

        The point, Jim, is that you can incorporate “XYZ Inc.” in Nevada, and I can incorporate “XYZ Inc.” in Delaware. They will still be two different corporations. Which one gets xyz.inc?

        Reply
  5. Samit says:
    June 5, 2012 at 12:18 pm

    So according to Dot Registry a company not incorporated in the US isn’t “legitimate”?
    Smart thinking, guess that’s why these people are at the cutting edge of technology.
    Or should that be chopping block?

    Reply
  6. John Berryhill says:
    June 5, 2012 at 3:23 pm

    What happens to the domain name when the corporation is terminated due to non-payment of annual fees to the state?
    If they are only checking at the time of registration, then the TLD does not “ensure legitimacy”. If I form a corporation in DE, and then do not pay the annual fee next year, does DotRegistry take the domain name away?

    Reply
  7. Paul Spurgeon says:
    June 7, 2012 at 3:11 pm

    When we created Dot Registry, we wanted it to be a members only community, much like the way .edu is used today. The right to use one of our domain extension comes with a higher bar than just filling out a form. We will know who is using each name, verify that the corporation is active and in good standing, and verify that data on an annual basis.
    People visiting a Dot Registry site will simply be assured of a higher level of authenticity

    Reply
  8. David says:
    June 28, 2015 at 5:53 am

    If you want it to be US only then they should be inc.us, llc.us
    It is totally wrong for the US to act so arrogantly in assuming international TLD domains relate only to US.
    Use the .US domains for this the way the rest of world politely does!

    Reply

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