First English new gTLD Sunrise periods start today

Donuts today kicks off the Sunrise periods for its first seven new gTLDs, the first English-language strings to start their priority registration periods for trademark owners.
The big question for mark holders today is whether to participate in Sunrise, or whether Donuts’ proprietary Domain Protected Marks List is the more cost-efficient way to go.
Sunrise starts today and runs until January 24 for .bike, .clothing, .guru, .holdings, .plumbing, .singles and .ventures. Donuts is planning seven more for December 3.
These are “end-date” Sunrises, meaning that no domains are awarded to participants until the full 60-day period is over. It’s not first-come, first-served, in other words.
Where more than one application for any given domain is received, Donuts will hold an auction after Sunrise closes to decide who gets to register the name.
The primary requirement for participating in Sunrise is, per ICANN’s base rules, that the trademark has been submitted to and validated by the Trademark Clearinghouse.
Donuts is not enforcing additional eligibility rules.
The company has not published its wholesale Sunrise application fee, but registrars have revealed some details.
Com Laude said that the Donuts “Sunrise Participation Fee” is $80, which will be the same across all of its gTLDs. Registrars seem to be marking this up by about 50%.
Tucows, for example, is asking its OpenSRS resellers for $120 per name, with an additional first-year reg fee ranging between $20 and $45 depending on gTLD.
Lexsynergy, which yesterday reported on Twitter a spike in TMCH submissions ahead of today’s launch, is charging between £91 ($147) and £99 ($160) for the application and first year combined.
The question for Trademark Owners is whether they should participate in the alternative Domain Protected Marks List or not.
The DPML is likely to be much cheaper for companies that want to protect a lot of marks across a lot of Donuts gTLDs.
A five-year DPML fee can be around $3,000, which works out to $3 per domain per year if Donuts winds up with 200 gTLDs in its portfolio.
Companies will not be able to actually use the domains blocked by the DPML, however, so it only makes sense for a wholly defensive blocking strategy.
In addition, DPML does not prevent a eligible mark owner from registering a DPML domain during Sunrise.
A policy Donuts calls “DPML Override” means that if somebody else owns a matching trademark, in any jurisdiction, they’ll be able to get “your” domain even if you’ve paid for a DPML entry.
I should point out that Donuts is simply following ICANN rules here. There are few ways for new gTLD registries to make names ineligible for Sunrise within their contracts.
Trademark owners are therefore going to have to decide whether it’s worth the risk of sticking to a strictly DPML strategy, or whether it might make more sense to do Sunrise on their most mission-critical marks.
DotShabaka Registry was the first new gTLD operator to go to Sunrise, with شبكة., though the lack of Arabic strings in the TMCH means it’s largely an exercise in contractual compliance.

TLDH and others sign first gTLD registry contracts

Top Level Domain Holdings and a few other new gTLD registries signed their first Registry Agreements with ICANN this week.
Its six new RAs were among 15 registry contracts ICANN signed this week. TLDH and its subsidiaries signed for: .horse, .cooking, .nrw (as Minds + Machine GmbH), .casa, .fishing and .budapest.
I’d heard some concerns at ICANN 48 this week about TLDH’s lack of signed contracts to date, but the concerns seem to have been misplaced.
Monolith Registry, partly owned by Afilias, has also signed RAs for .voto and .vote, the latter of which was won at auction.
Small Chinese portfolio applicant Zodiac Holdings got its second and third gTLD contracts: .商城 (“.mall”) and .八卦 (“.gossip”).
German registry I-Registry got .rich and Russian registry The Foundation for Network Initiatives got .дети (“.kids/children”).
Previously contracted parties Donuts and Uniregistry added .tools and .expert (Donuts) and .christmas (Uniregistry) to their portfolios on Friday.
The total number of new gTLDs with RAs is now about 130.

GACmail? Belgium denies .spa gTLD shakedown

The Belgian government has denied claims that the city of Spa tried to shake down new gTLD applicants for money in exchange for not objecting to their .spa applications.
The Belgian Governmental Advisory Committee representative said this afternoon that Belgium was “extremely unhappy” that the “disrespectful allusions” got an airing during a meeting with the ICANN board.
He was responding directly to a question asked during a Sunday session by ICANN director Chris Disspain, who, to be fair, didn’t name either the government or the gTLD. He had said:

I understand there is at least one application, possibly more, where a government or part a government is negotiating with the applicant in respect to receive a financial benefit from the applicant. I’m concerned about that and I wondered if the GAC had a view as to whether such matters were appropriate.

While nobody would talk on the record, asking around the ICANN 48 meeting here in Buenos Aires it became clear that Disspain was referring to Belgium and .spa.
It was not clear whether he was referring to Donuts or to Asia Spa and Wellness Promotion Council, which have both applied for the string.
The string “spa” was not protected by ICANN’s rules on geographic names, but the GAC in April advised ICANN not to approve the applications until governments had more time to reach a decision.
My inference from Disspain’s question was that Belgium was planning to press for a GAC objection to .spa unless its city got paid, which could be perceived as an abuse of power.
Nobody from the GAC answered the question on Sunday, but Belgium today denied that anything inappropriate was going on, saying Disspain’s assertion was “factually incorrect”.
There is a contract between Spa and an applicant, he confirmed, but he said that “no money will flow to the city of Spa”.
“A very small part of the profits of the registry will go to the community served by .spa,” he said.
This side-deal does not appear to be a public document, but the Belgian rep said that it has been circulated to GAC members for transparency purposes.
There are several applicants whose strings appeared on ICANN’s protected geo names list that have been required to get letters of non-objection from various countries.
Tata Group, for example, needed permission from Morocco for .tata, while TUI had to go to Burkina Faso for .tui. Both are the names of provinces in those countries.
It’s not publicly known how these letters of non-objection were obtained, and whether any financial benefit accrued to the government as a result.

Seven more Donuts gTLDs delegated

Donuts had seven new gTLDs added to the DNS root zone today.
The strings are: .diamonds, .tips, .photography, .directory, .kitchen, .enterprises and .today.
The nic.tld domains in each are already resolving, redirecting users to Donuts’ official site at donuts.co.
There are now 31 live new gTLDs, 26 of which belong to Donuts subsidiaries.

.sexy and 10 more gTLDs now in the root

The third batch of new gTLDs have gone live.
Uniregistry’s .sexy and .tattoo are currently in the DNS root zone, the first two of its portfolio to become active.
The TLDs .bike, .construction, .contractors, .estate, .gallery, .graphics, .land, .plumbing, and .technology from Donuts have also gone live today.
Donuts already had 10 new gTLDs in the root from the first two batches.
There are now 24 live new gTLDs.
The first second-level domains to become available will be nic.tld in each, per the ICANN contract they’ve all signed.
You’ll notice that they’re all ASCII strings, despite the fact that IDNs get priority treatment in the new gTLD program.

1&1 prices first four Donuts gTLDs at $50-$80 a year

The registrar 1&1 Internet has started selling pre-registrations in the first four Donuts new gTLDs for between $50 and $80 a year.
Three gTLDs — .singles, .bike and .clothing — carry a $49.99 price tag at the company’s US site. In the UK, they’re priced at £29.99. A fourth gTLD, .holdings, costs $79.99/£49.99.
Customers are only billed if 1&1 manages to grab the domain when the relevant gTLD launches.
The annual renewal fees appear to be the same as the pre-registration fees, but it’s not yet clear whether they’re the same as the standard reg fee when these gTLDs go to general availability next year.
As we’ve seen already via Go Daddy, some new gTLD registries are choosing to charge higher fees for pre-registered names, due to the more relaxed pricing regulations imposed by ICANN.
1&1 has been widely advertising new gTLDs on TV in the US and Europe for weeks — rumor has it the campaign’s budget is around $80 million — and has amassed four million non-binding pre-registrations to date.
Meanwhile, ICANN today warned internet users about the risks of pre-registering domains.

Nine Donuts gTLDs delegated

Donuts has had a batch of nine new gTLDs delegated to the DNS root today.
The nine strings are: .ventures, .camera, .clothing, .lighting, .singles, .voyage, .guru, .holdings and .equipment.
All belong to various Donuts subsidiaries that have signed Registry Agreements with ICANN over the last few months.
At this precise moment it does not seem that any have their basic “nic.” second-level domains active and resolving, but all are appearing in the DNS root zone.
Earlier today, Donuts announced the sunrise dates for the first seven gTLDs in its portfolio.
The company already has one gTLD delegated, the Chinese-script version of “.games”.

Donuts puts date to first Sunrise, signs big registrars, says it won’t have a landrush

Donuts has announced the dates of its first Sunrise periods and revealed that it’s not planning to run a landrush period for its first seven new gTLDs.
The company said today that it plans to take .bike, .clothing, .guru, .holdings, .plumbing, .singles and .ventures to Sunrise on November 26.
It’s opted for a 60-day Sunrise period, going to full general availability on January 29 next year. The company said:

Donuts will forego a traditional land-rush and move directly to general availability to all registrants on January 29, 2014. Donuts’ gTLDs are available for registration by anyone without restriction.

Donuts also said it has signed the following registrars to its channel: GoDaddy, 1&1 Internet, Web.com, Tucows, Host Europe Group, Key-Systems, CSC Digital Brand Services, MarkMonitor, NetNames, Gandi, united-domains, Melbourne IT and 101domain.
While the press release issued this afternoon suggests that the seven strings in question have already been delegated, I’m not seeing them in the DNS root zone yet.

Four more new gTLD contracts signed, including .email

Four new gTLD registries signed their contracts with ICANN yesterday.
Donuts added Registry Agreements for .email and .codes to its portfolio, bringing its total up to 43.
CORE Association signed for بازار., which means “bazaar”. It’s CORE’s third and final RA as an applicant and its only Arabic application. It’s already live with two Cyrillic strings.
Finally, DotBerlin signed its contract for the city TLD .berlin, apparently confirming the rumor that the one it signed on stage alongside .wien at the newdomains.org conference earlier this week was in fact a prop.
According to the DI PRO database, ICANN now has contracts with 80 new gTLDs and 18 legacy gTLDs.

Three gTLD Community Objections rejected

International Chamber of Commerce panelists have recently rejected three Community Objections against new gTLD applications.
The dismissals include objections to the controversial Turkey-based bids for .islam and .halal, filed by Asia Green IT System, which had raised the ire of the United Arab Emirates’ telecommunications regulator.
The UAE’s Telecommunications Regulatory Authority — also the operator of its ccTLDs — said it was representing the wider Islamic community under orders from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
But ICC panelist Bernardo Cremades ruled, based on a close reading of the OIC’s letter to the TRA and other member states, that the OIC had not formally backed the objection.
While there were over 100 public comments objecting to .islam and over 70 to .halal, because the TRA merely referred to them rather than submitting copies as evidence, the panelist chose to ignore them completely.
He also noted that only the UAE has chosen to file a formal objection.
So Cremades ruled that there was no “substantial opposition” to the applications, which is one of the things objectors need to prove in order to win an objection.
The TRA also failed to persuade the panelist that there was “a likelihood of any material detriment” to the Muslim community if Asia Green’s gTLDs were to be delegated, writing:

The Objector has certainly not provided any evidence that the Respondent is not acting or does not intend to act in accordance with the interests of the Muslim community.

So the TRA’s objections were dismissed and the applicant can proceed to the next phase of the new gTLD program.
Also dismissed recently was Bundesverband der Deutschen Tourismuswirtschaft’s objection to Donuts’ application for .reisen (“travel” in German).
BTW, a German travel industry association, is associated with a competing bid for .reise. Weirdly, it did not file a String Confusion Objection against Donuts’ .reisen.
It had argued among other things that German speakers would expect .reisen to conform to German and European consumer protection laws, while Donuts is planning an open and unrestricted gTLD.
The ICC panelist didn’t buy that argument, noting that a hotel in Argentina could market itself as German-speaking without having to abide by, say, European data protection law.
He also ruled that BTW showed substantial opposition from the commercial sector of German-language travel agents, but not from other sections of the community such as individual travelers.
Finally, he ruled that Donuts had promised to put enough protection mechanisms in place to mean there was unlikely to be a detriment to the .reisen community.
The objection was dismissed.