.wine applicants changing tune on geo protection?

Aggressive lobbying of ICANN by the wine-making industries on both sides of the Atlantic may be about to bear fruit.
Applicants for .wine and .vin are talking to the organization about providing special protection for a list of “geographic indicator” terms, according to CEO Fadi Chehade.
In a letter to French secretary of state for digital Axelle Lemaire published last week, Chehade said:

The parties involved are now working on devising a mechanism which would offer protections to a reserved list of names, which would be contractually protected through ICANN’s registry agreement, along with a set of rules around how those names could be distributed to parties that have interests in and the rights to them. Once they are finalized, ICANN would be charged with monitoring and ensuring compliance with these commitments.

While the details have not yet been revealed, this appears to be what wine makers have been looking for.
GIs are terms such as “Napa Valley” and “Champagne”. While they are protected under various national and international laws, they don’t enjoy the same degree of global recognition as trademarks.
They do not qualify for inclusion in the Trademark Clearinghouse, so would not automatically be protected when .wine and .vin launch.
ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee was unable to reach consensus on what should be done about GIs. European countries wanted protections, but the US, Canada and Australia were against the idea.
Wine makers presented a pretty unified front, however, even when they did not benefit from the support of their own governments.
Industry groups and the European Commission had separately started Cooperative Engagement Processes with ICANN — a prelude to filing Independent Review Process complaints.
These CEPs are evidently what kick-started the current negotiations.
There are three applicants for .wine — Donuts, Famous Four and Afilias. Only Donuts has applied for .vin.
Donuts declined to comment on the talks referred to in the Chehade letter.

Nominet hires venture capitalist as new CEO

Nominet has named Lesley Cowley’s replacement as CEO as Russell Haworth, a Thomson Reuters alum who’s spent much of 2014 working as a venture capitalist.
Russell was previously managing director of Thomson Reuters’ Middle East & Africa division.
Since January, he’s been a co-founder and partner at Saya Ventures, an investment company focused on early-stage technology companies.
“Russell will lead the organisation as it develops its core registry business, explores the potential of new technologies, and delivers on its commitment to ensuring the internet is a force for good,” Nominet said.
He’s set to join the .uk registry in January 2015.
He replaces Cowley, who resigned in May and earlier this month revealed several new jobs.

Former pop star is .uk’s 10,000th cybersquatting case

Nominet has processed its 10,000th cybersquatting dispute, according to the company.
Conveniently for the .uk registry’s public relations department, the complainant in the case was Aston Merrygold, a well-known former member of the pop group JLS.
He won astonmerrygold.co.uk, which was registered to London-based Martyn O’Brien, using Nominet’s 12-year-old Dispute Resolution Service.
Merrygold does not have a trademark covering his name, but the DRS panelist found that he had rights anyway, due to his relative fame and numerous TV appearances.
O’Brien registered the name in 2008, along with the names of Merrygold’s band-mates, after JLS appeared in the final of TV talent show The X Factor.
JLS had a brief but successful pop career before breaking up last year. Merrygold currently intends to go solo, which presumably inspired the DRS complaint.
Nominet also announced today that Tony Willoughby, who has been chair of the DRS panel since 2002, has stepped aside and will be replaced by DRS appeals panelist Nick Gardner.

gTLD auctions net ICANN another $13m

ICANN has raised another $12.9 million from new gTLD auctions.
A small batch of three contention sets — .realty, .salon and .spot — were resolved last Wednesday in the third so-called “last resort” auction.
.realty went to Fegistry for $5,588,888, .salon to Donuts for $5,100,575 and .spot to Amazon for $2.2 million.
ICANN now has accumulated new gTLD auction sales totaling $27.8 million.
It raised $14.3 million selling off .buy, .tech and .vip in September. The auction for .信息 fetched $600,000 in June.
ICANN’s share — after auctioneer Power Auctions is paid off — is being put into a special fund, rather that ICANN’s current account. The community will one day have to decide what to spend it on.

Afilias set for $100m London IPO

London’s Alternative Investment Market is fast becoming the stock market of choice for new gTLD registries, with .info mainstay Afilias today announcing an upcoming IPO.
The Ireland-based company hopes to raise $100 million by selling off about 30% of the company, giving it a growth war-chest and giving its investors a shot at getting some of their money back.
Afilias earmarked part of the expected windfall for new gTLD auctions, as well as acquisitions of new gTLD “assets” and operational registries and expansion of its registrar business.
Executive chairman Jonathan Robinson said in a statement:

The Placing will bring significant benefits – by providing further capital to fund our organic and acquisitive growth plans, and raising our corporate profile with existing and new customers.

In addition to .info, .mobi and .pro, Afilias is associated with 254 new gTLD applications either as applicant or back-end provider. As registry, it already has about a dozen 2012-round gTLDs in the root.
The company’s revenue for 2013 was $77.6 million, up from $74.5 million in 2012. Earnings before deductions were $38.6 million in 2013, up from $32.1 million in 2012.
Fellow gTLD registries CentralNic and Minds + Machines are also listed on AIM.

Two-letter domains to be released in new gTLDs

New gTLD registries will be able to release all two-character strings in their zones, following an ICANN decision last week.
The ICANN board of directors voted on Thursday to instruct ICANN’s executive to

develop and implement an efficient procedure for the release of two-character domains currently required to be reserved in the New gTLD Registry Agreement

The procedure will have to take into account the advice of the Governmental Advisory Committee issued at the end of last week’s ICANN 51 meeting in Los Angeles.
But that advice merely asks that governments are informed when a registry requests the release of two-character names.
All two-character strings were initially reserved due to the potential for confusion with two-letter ccTLDs.
But the GAC decided in LA that it doesn’t really have a problem with such strings being released, with some governments noting that ccTLD second-levels such as us.com and uk.com haven’t caused a problem to date.
The board’s decision is particularly good news for dot-brand applicants that may want to run domains such as uk.google or de.bmw to service specific regions where they operate.
Registries representing over 200 new gTLDs have already filed Registry Service Evaluation Process requests for the release of some two-character strings (some including ccTLD matches, some not).
It’s not yet clear how ICANN will go about removing the two-character restriction.
It may be more efficient to offer all registries a blanket amendment to the RA rather than process each RSEP request individually as it is today.
However, because the GAC has asked for notification on a case-by-case basis, ICANN may be forced to stick to the something along the lines of the existing procedure.

Donuts sells millionth domain name

Donuts today sold its millionth domain name, according to a company press release.
The name, according to Donuts, was heavenly.coffee.
I’m not saying heavenly.coffee wasn’t the one millionth name, but I reckon that if the one millionth name had been get-free-viagra.guru, I’d still be looking at a press release talking about heavenly.coffee this afternoon.
Donuts is obviously the first company to hit this target. It owns the largest portfolio of new gTLDs by a considerable margin.
The company has 150 delegated gTLDs, 140 of which are in general availability.

Iceland yanks Islamic State domain

Iceland’s ccTLD operator has suspended one or more domain names affiliated with Islamic State, the terrorist group currently running riot in parts of Iraq and Syria.
ISNIC runs .is, which matches the IS acronym.
In a statement on its web site, the company said:

ISNIC has suspended domains that were used for the website of a known terrorist organisation. The majority of ISNIC’s board made this decision today, on the grounds of Article 9 of ISNIC’s Rules on Domain Registration, which states: “The registrant is responsible for ensuring that the use of the domain is within the limits of Icelandic law as current at any time.”
Never before has ISNIC suspended a domain on grounds of a website’s content.

The domain in question was reportedly khilafah.is, which had a web site titled “Khilafah #IS | Media Releases from Islamic State”. Khilafah is the Latin-script version of the Arabic word for Caliphate.
IS has previously been known as Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). It’s current media practice here in the UK to call it “so-called Islamic State”.

Governments totally cool with two-letter domains

ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee does not plan to advise against the release of two-character domain names in new gTLDs.
In fact, judging by a GAC discussion at ICANN 51 in Los Angeles yesterday, the governments of many major nations are totally cool with the idea.
Under the standard Registry Agreement for new gTLD registries, all two-character domains (any combination of letters, numbers) must not be sold or activated in the DNS.
The blanket ban was designed to avoid clashes with two-letter ccTLD codes, both existing and future.
ICANN left the door open for registries to request the release of such names, however, and many companies have formally applied to do so via the Registry Services Evaluation Process.
Some registries want all two-character domains released, others have only asked for permission to sell those strings that do not match allocated ccTLDs.
There seems to have been an underlying assumption that governments may want to protect their geographic turf. That assumption may turn out to be untrue.
Representatives from the United States, Netherlands, Spain, Denmark, Australia, Austria and Iran all said yesterday that the GAC should not issue formal advice against the the two-character proposals.
No governments opposed that apparent consensus view.
“The use of the ‘US’ two-letter country code at the second level has not presented any technical or policy issues for the United States,” US rep Suzanne Radell said.
“We, in fact, do not require any approval for the use of US two-character country codes at the second level in existing gTLDs, and do not propose to require anything for new gTLDs,” she said.
She even highlighted domains such as us.com and us.org — which are marketed by UK-based CentralNic as alternatives to the .us ccTLD — as being just fine and dandy with the US government.
It seems likely that the GAC will instead suggest to ICANN that it is the responsibility of individual governments to challenge the registries’ requests via the RSEP process.
“What we see at the moment is that ICANN is putting these RSEP requests out for public comment and it would be open to any government to use that public comment period if they did feel in some instances that there was a concern,” Australian GACer Peter Nettlefold said.
I’ve not been able to find any government comments to the relevant RSEP requests.
For example, Neustar’s .neustar, which proposes the release of all two-character strings including country codes, has yet to receive a comment from a government.
Many comments in other RSEP fora appear to be from fellow dot-brand registries that want to use two-letter codes to represent the countries where they operate.

Uniregistry wins .cars gTLD

Uniregistry has won the .cars new gTLD at auction.
Donuts withdrew its competing application for the string this week. Third candidate DERCars’ application is still showing as active on ICANN’s web site.
However, Uniregistry CEO Frank Schilling confirmed to DI that his company has won the contention set.
The automobile-related gTLD space is quite congested and, one might argue, confusing.
Uniregistry’s .cars will compete with Google, which has an uncontested application for the singular .car, and DERCars which stood uncontested for the now-delegated .autos.
Uniregistry previously won the four-way fight for .auto at auction but has yet to contract with ICANN.