Recent Posts
- ICANN publishes its Woke Manifesto. Here’s my hot take
- Alibaba, Name.com among new RDRS opt-ins
- The Swiss can register .swiss domains from next week
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- ICANN content policing power grab may be dead
- Cable company unplugs its dot-brand after acquisition
- Germany crosses 10,000 dot-brand domains milestone
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- Some registrars have already quit ICANN’s Whois experiment
- ICANN opens $217 million Grant Program
- Internet could get one-letter gTLDs (but there’s a catch)
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- .ai registry advises buyers not to use GoDaddy
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- Microsoft moving its cloud apps from .com to .microsoft
- ICANN 79: anonymous trolls and undercover lawyers
- ICANN scores win in single-letter .com lawsuit
- Cosmetics brand terminates its gTLD
- Up to 70 jobs on the line at Nominet as .uk regs dwindle
- Governments back down on new gTLD next round delay
- Private auctions could be banned in new gTLD next round
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- Registry service provider evaluation handbook published
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- D3 announces fourth crypto new gTLD client
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- UK cybersquatting complaints hit record low
- No excuses! PIR to pay for ALL registries to tackle child abuse
- ICANN insists it is working on linkification
- Namecheap sues ICANN over .org price caps
- GoDaddy offers free Ethereum blockchain integration
- Epik reveals who is running the company
- 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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- Russia blames DNSSEC, not Ukraine, for internet downtime
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- Sold for over $20k, insure.ai and dog.ai back in .ai’s expired names auction
- .ai helps UDRP cases rise in 2023, WIPO says
- Freenom’s domains land at Gandi after termination
- .ru domains fly off the shelf as Western sanctions bite
- ICANN picks its first ever Supreme Court
- Lebanon’s ccTLD going back to Lebanon after ICANN takeover
- ICANN picks the domain it will never, ever release
- ICANN approves domain takedown rules
- Has Epik gone “woke”?
- First bits of new gTLD Applicant Guidebook expected next week
- ICANN bans closed generics for the foreseeable
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- After 14 years, ICANN practices what it preaches on IDNs
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- Anguilla fears the .ai junk drop
- Five more gTLDs get launch dates
- $10 million of ICANN cash up for grabs
- Almost 50,000 .ai domains sold in a quarter
- ICANN threatens to regulate your speech [RANT]
- Life insurance company kills dot-brand
- ICANN finds new home for Lebanon’s TLD after founder’s death
- ICANN begs people to use its new Whois service
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- Over 50,000 .ai domains sold in three months
- Amazon planning new push into registrar market?
- Registries and registrars vote ‘Yes’ to new DNS abuse rules
- ICANN predicts flattish 2025 for domain industry
- Fast-growing Gname buys another 150 registrars
- GoDaddy service to let you block domains in over 650 TLDs
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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
- Nominet to take over .gov.uk
- ICANN picks Istanbul for 2024 meeting
- ICANN’s private Whois data request service goes live
- .au regs slide on 2LD anniversary
- ICANN accused of power grab over $271 million auction fund
- A registrar is getting blamed for an Israeli war propaganda site
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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
Uniregistry plans “dot-spanning” Sunrise periods and anti-gaming protection
Uniregistry is to offer a second Sunrise period in its new gTLDs, going over and above what is required by ICANN, aimed at companies with trademarks that “span the dot”.
Say you run a tattoo parlor and have a trademark on “Joe’s Tattoo”. The ICANN-mandated Sunrise would only allow you to register joestattoo.tattoo, but Uniregistry will allow you to buy joes.tattoo as well.
It would also allow “plurals and conjugations”, so a company with a trademark on “Joe’s Tattoos” would presumably also be eligible for joes.tattoo, even though they’re not an exact match.
This Sunrise B plan appears to apply to all of Uniregistry’s forthcoming gTLDs and was approved by ICANN recently (pdf).
The additional service would be invitation-only, restricted to companies that have participated in the regular Sunrise period, which Uniregistry is calling Sunrise A.
For Sunrise A, Uniregistry plans to allow mark owners to register regular resolving domain names or purchase “blocking” registrations, where the domain resolves to a non-monetized Uniregistry placeholder.
Sunrise B participants would not be able to purchase blocking registrations; for “dot-spanning” trademarks the name must resolve.
Uniregistry also plans to implement an “anti-hijack” measure to help prevent — or at least add friction to — .eu-style gaming by domain speculators during its launch periods.
If you participate in either Sunrise period, you won’t be able to later transfer your name to a third party without providing the registry with proof that you’ve also transferred the corresponding trademark registration.
No one is gonna want a .tattoo.
Joe will not want the singular nor the plural.
How dumb.
This is certainly an innovative service from Uniregistry.
What is not clear is whether their Sunrise B occurs prior to the start of their general registrations or is parallel to it.
The Start-up Plan published by ICANN shows general registrations starting 75 days after the start of Sunrise A and does not mention any “additional periods”, such as Sunrise B. (http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/node/17471)
Thanks, Tom. We thought it was something of a no-brainer. The Sunrise rules adopted by ICANN actually forbid Walmart from obtaining wal.mart during a .mart Sunrise.
Does that make sense to anyone?
Kevin and Tom…. the launch plan published by ICANN was, unfortunately, not the last version of the plan which ICANN had received and acknowledged. Apparently, the one which they published was an earlier draft, and we expect that the reference to “blocking” registrations and the timeline will be correctly reflected after they return from their holiday break.
The Sunrise procedures which were ultimately required by ICANN ruled out any additional trademark protections running concurrently with the prescribed Sunrise. This was something of a a consequence of paranoia among elements of the IPC about allowing anything else – including additional trademark eligibility – during the Sunrise. Accordingly, anyone who would qualify for a “dot spanning” registration should apply in the course of the normal sunrise.
Applicants qualifying for “spanning the dot” treatment can be determined from the strings applied for during the normal sunrise. So, identifying “spanning the dot” qualified sunrise applicants will occur concurrently with “Sunrise A contention resolution”, as it does not require any sort of additional sunrise application.
The “anti hijack” provisions are there to ensure additional security for Sunrise-registered domain names, such as the common scenario of someone in the IT department, or an outside contractor, running off with the domain name. That type of situation is not well addressed by the UDRP, since such domain registrations are, at least initially, authorized by the trademark owner.
You are correct, however, that it provides the additional benefit of deterring gaming by speculative domain registrations based on formal trademark registrations not representative of substantial goodwill.
Is it possible for anyone other than the listed trademark owner (eg a contractor or IT guy) to obtain a sunrise registration in the first place?
Do disgruntled former employees tend to transfer the domains, or do they just take over the registrar account?