How to get a $180,000 new gTLD refund

ICANN will give new gTLD applicants a $180,000 refund on their application fee if they withdraw before May 2, it has emerged.

This refund is not mentioned in the Applicant Guidebook, in which the maximum refund available is $148,000. Nor could I find any reference to it on the ICANN new gTLDs microsite.

However, in response to an inquiry from DI last night, an ICANN customer service rep said:

Applications withdrawn prior to the posting of the applied-for strings are qualified for a $180000 refund (if such payment has been made and reconciled by ICANN). The USD5000 registration fee is non-refundable.

The posting of the applied-for strings occurs approximately 2 weeks after the end of the application window, which closes on 12 April 2012. Applications withdrawn after the posting of the applied-for strings will receive refunds according to the refund schedule in section 1.5 of the Applicant Guidebook.

At least one other person, new gTLD consultant Michael Palage of Pharos Global, was told substantially the same thing by the new gTLD service center earlier this week.

I believe ICANN is currently targeting May 2 for its Big Reveal, when we all find out who’s applying for what. May 1, I believe, has been ruled out because it’s a public holiday in some parts of the world.

I don’t think this apparently obscure refund opportunity significantly increases the risk of gaming, but I can see how it might alter some applicants’ strategies.

It’s possible, for example, that in some cases it might now make more sense for an applicant to announce its bid between April 12 and May 2.

After April 12, nobody will be able to file a competing, gaming application, but revealing a strong bid might be enough to scare already-competing applicants into dropping out for a 97% refund.

I don’t think it really helps reluctant dot-brand applicants, which have asked for the $180,000 refund to be available after they know what the competitive landscape for similar strings looks like.

.nxt new gTLD conference open for registration

The third .nxt conference on new generic top-level domains opened for early bird registrations today.

Having appeared twice in San Francisco, this time it’s my home town of London’s turn to host the event.

Organizer Kieren McCarthy is hoping to attract an international audience passing through London on their way to the ICANN 44 public meeting in Prague, Czech Republic.

The conference will be held at the Park Plaza Victoria in central London on June 20 to 22, ending just before the first day of meetings in Prague.

The three-track agenda can be found here.

I attended the first two .nxts in person and remotely and I’ve found that McCarthy is pretty good at lining up an excellent range of compelling speakers and panelists.

The main drawback some have found is that many of the attendees are likely to be the same faces you’ll see at ICANN meetings.

However, with this being the first .nxt to happen after April 12 – when hundreds of new companies have filed their applications and committed to enter the domain name industry – there very well might be a broader range of delegates at the London show.

Early bird pricing, available before April 12, starts at £399 ($632) plus 20% tax for the full three days. It then goes up to £599 ($949) plus tax. Day passes are also available.

You can take advantage of the discounted pricing by registering here.

Timing of .com contract renewal is telling

The timing of the publication of the renegotiated .com registry contract may give Verisign and ICANN the chance to duck some criticism about its price-raising powers.

According to ICANN’s announcement last night, the draft contract is up for public comment until April 26, a week before we find out how much new gTLD business Verisign has won.

Verisign is expected to have secured a large share of the burgeoning market for new gTLD back-end registry services.

It is whispered that a great many North American brands planning to apply for their own dot-brand gTLDs prefer Verisign as their registry provider, due to its reputation for stability.

That up-time is of course provided by a robust, distributed infrastructure paid for over the years by the same .com registrants now facing four more years of price increases.

It’s debatable whether Verisign can continue to make a convincing public interest case for .com price hikes if it’s also profiting by hosting dot-brands on the same boxes and pipes.

But because the public comment period closes April 26 and ICANN does not plan to publish the new gTLD applications until May 2, the argument that Verisign is using .com buyers to subsidize its dot-brand business will have to be made without hard data to back it up.

I doubt such arguments would be heard anyway, frankly. ICANN pretty much has its hands bound by the 2006 contract when it comes to messing around with pricing controls.

For those opposed to price increases, a more effective lobbying strategy might head straight to Washington DC, where the Departments of Commerce and Justice will both study the deal from September.

ICANN asked to protect the names of body parts

There’s been no shortage of special pleading in relation to ICANN’s new generic top-level domains program, but this has to be the wackiest yet.

The National Health Council, an American advocacy group, has written to ICANN to ask for extra brand protection for the names of body parts, disabiliies and diseases.

Seriously.

NHC president Myrl Weinberg wrote:

Because it is not possible to trademark a body part (e.g., lung, liver) or a disease category (e.g., arthritis, diabetes), it is difficult for the patient advocacy community to protect the use of such words.

…

We strongly urge ICANN to set forth a process that investigates the potential for misunderstanding, confusion, and harm when awarding gTLDs utilizing the name of a body part or disease/disability.

The letter was inexplicably sent to ICANN’s public comment period on the Universal Acceptance of TLDs. Needless to say it’s completely off-topic, not to mention extremely late.

What seems to have happened is that the NHC’s members received a briefing recently from an ICANN staffer as part of its outreach program and what they learned gave them the willies^TM.

ICANN adds 266 new gTLD applicants in a week

Remember that last-minute rush I was telling you about?

ICANN has revealed that it now has 556 registered users in its Top-Level Domain Application System, up from 290 just a week ago.

Each TAS account can be used to apply for 49 new gTLDs (not 50 as previously reported), so we’re looking at anywhere from 0 to 27,244 new gTLD applications.

Based on what I’ve heard from consultants, I estimate that the true number of applications represented by these 556 accounts could be over 1,000.

Companies applying for dot-brand gTLDs are in many cases also applying for a couple of keyword gTLDs related to their vertical industry too, I hear.

Fairwinds Partners, which has been mostly working with skeptical brands, said this week that its clients on average are applying for 2.7s gTLD each.

Applied across all the TAS accounts registered to date, that would mean 1,501 applications.

The deadline for new TAS registrations is this Thursday, March 29, at 2359 UTC. That’s 1659 in ICANN’s native California and 1959 on America’s east coast.

Remember that while the UK switches from GMT (which is the same as UTC) to BST tomorrow morning, UTC does not observe daylight savings and remains the same.