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Famous Four wins two new gTLD contention sets

Kevin Murphy, June 25, 2013, 06:44:15 (UTC), Domain Registries

Four new gTLD applications were withdrawn overnight, resolving three contention sets.
Top Level Domain holdings has pulled its bids for .review and .science, in both cases leaving subsidiaries of portfolio applicant Famous Four Media as the only remaining applicant.
Meanwhile, Famous Four withdrew its .fit application, leaving TLDH as the only remaining applicant.
Buyouts? It seems possible. The .review application passed its Initial Evaluation a month ago, so the ICANN refund due to TLDH will have been dramatically reduced.
As a publicly traded company, TLDH is likely to issue a statement at some point explaining the current state of its applications.
But one of the side effects of ICANN’s preference for private deals is that we won’t always know when two or more companies privately resolve their contention sets.
There are at least two other contention sets where I have very good reasons to believe that deals have already been done, partially resolving the set, but nothing has yet been disclosed.
Also overnight, L’Oreal’s application for .garnier, a dot-brand, was withdrawn. It’s the fifth, and probably not the last, of L’Oreal’s 14 original new gTLD application to be dropped.
Governmental Advisory Committee advice has been leveled against .fit and .review, but not .science.
UPDATE: The original version of this story erroneously reported that TLDH, rather than Famous Four, had withdrawn its .fit application. This has now been corrected. Apologies for the error.



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Comments (3)

  1. Actually, Famous Four, not TLDH, withdrew .fit.

    • Kevin Murphy says:

      Thanks. This is what happens when I blog before the caffeine kicks in. I’ve corrected the post.
      Sorry for the error.

  2. Andrew says:

    Perhaps more of a swap than a buyout.

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