90 new gTLDs pass IE. Two more withdrawals

ICANN has published its weekly run-down of new gTLD Initial Evaluation results and this week 90 applications have passed.
There have also been two withdrawals, both made by Uniregistry. It’s withdrawn its bids for .media and .country, leaving Tucows and Donuts duking it out for .media and Top Level Domain Holdings as the sole remaining applicant for .country.
TLDH and Uniregistry previously inked a deal that would see them go 50:50 on .country, the only question remaining was which applicant would drop out.
These are this week’s passing applications:

.ecom .doctor .cpa .forum .aco .mba .mom .sbs .frogans .rip .changiairport .tirol .homesense .swatch .hotel .ice .realty .web .fun .clubmed .ril .creditcard .datsun .netbank .jmp .ferrero .hockey .contact .avianca .gold .beauty .audi .cheap .bet .uconnect .map .cooking .pics .network .madrid .garden .zone .expert .cfa .trv .review .forum .pizza .dabur .pay .app .bingo .home .ryukyu .agency .tdk .xfinity .nokia .raid .hoteles .tube .school .win .gmbh .faith .show .radio .pizza .wtf .juniper .xerox .rehab .global .cloud .docs .life .fun .brother .intel .place .photo .christmas .wine .dupont .run .home .ping .boutique .mortgage .store

Donuts chalks up another LRO win

Donuts has successfully fought off another Legal Rights Objection against one of its new gTLD applications.
This time the objector was The Limited, apparently the operator of a large chain of clothing stores in the US, and the applied-for gTLD was .limited, which is uncontested.
Key to the World Intellectual Property Organization panelist’s decision appears to be the fact that the brand and the trademark in question is “The Limited” rather than “Limited”.
The retailer failed to show that it was commonly known by the word “Limited” alone, whereas Donuts made the case that “limited” is a common generic word with multiple uses.
The panelist wrote:

The definite article “the” makes a difference in this case. If the string were <.thelimited>, Applicant’s professed plans for the String would be highly suspect. This is because limited liability businesses do not use the term “the limited” (or an abbreviation or derivation thereof) in their company name.
…
In the absence of the definite article “the” in the String, however, Applicant’s proposed use of the String is plausible and legitimate, and the likelihood of confusion between Objector’s mark and the String is greatly reduced. There is simply no viable evidence in the record to suggest that significant source confusion – among consumers or non-consumers who use the Internet – will ensue if Applicant carries out its plans.

It’s the sixth LRO to be decided and the sixth finding in favor of the new gTLD applicant.
Donuts also fought off an objection from another clothing retailer, Express, which it is fighting for the .express gTLD.

GAC to kill off .amazon

The Governmental Advisory Committee has agreed to file a consensus objection against Amazon’s application for .amazon.
The decision, which came this morning during a GAC session at the ICANN meeting in Durban, also applies to the company’s applications for .amazon in non-Latin scripts.
The objection came at the behest of Brazil and other Latin American countries that claim rights to Amazon as a geographic term, and follows failed attempts by Amazon to reach agreement.
Brazil was able to achieve consensus in the GAC because the United States, which refused to agree to the objection three months ago in Beijing, had decided to keep mum this time around.
The objection will be forwarded to the ICANN board in the GAC’s Durban communique later in the week, after which the board will have a presumption that the .amazon application should be rejected.
The board could overrule the GAC, but it seems unlikely.
It’s the second big American brand to get the GAC kiss of death after Patagonia, which withdrew its application for .patagonia last week after the US revealed its hands-off approach for Durban.
Both Amazon and Patagonia slipped through the standard Geographic Names Panel check because they’re trans-national regions, whereas the panel used lists of administrative divisions to determine whether strings were geographic.
Amazon the company was named after the region or river in Latin America, which was in turn named after a culture of female warriors originating from, according to Herodotus, Ukraine.
It’s not known whether Ukraine had a position on the objection and Herodotus was unavailable for comment.

100th new gTLD application withdrawn

Former London mayor Ken Livingstone, rejoice!
L’Oreal has withdrawn its gTLD application for .redken, a dot-brand for one of its hair care products that I am reliably informed is not named after the balding socialist politician.
It’s the seventh of the company’s 14 new gTLD bids to be withdrawn.
Also today, it emerged that portfolio applicant Famous Four Media has withdrawn its application for .health, the only one of the four bids for that string yet to pass Initial Evaluation.
The string is one of the most controversial, being the subject of multiple very expensive to defend objections as well as strong Governmental Advisory Committee advice.
As of today, 100 new gTLD applications have been withdrawn, 53 of which were for uncontested strings.

First new gTLD contracts signed

Donuts, an ARI Registry Services subsdiary and CORE this morning became the first new gTLD applicants to sign registry contracts with ICANN.
The ceremonial signing took place live on stage at the opening ceremony of ICANN 47, the week-long public meeting in Durban, South Africa.
ARI CEO Adrian Kinderis signed on behalf of شبكة. applicant International Domain Registry. The string is Arabic for “.web” and transliterates as “.shabaka”. It is 3 in the program’s evaluation queue.
In an ARI press release, Go Daddy CEO Blake Irving confirmed that Go Daddy will carry .shabaka.
Donuts CEO Paul Stahura signed for .游戏, the Chinese-language “.games”, which had prioritization number 40.
It was not immediately clear which contracts Iliya Bazlyankov, chair of CORE’s executive committee, signed. CORE has applied for three internationalized domain name gTLDs with high priority numbers.
(UPDATE: Bazlyankov has been in touch to say: “We signed the .сайт (site) and .онлайн (online) contracts which had numbers 6 and 9 in the priority”.)
Representatives of Go Daddy, MarkMonitor, Momentous, Mailclub and African registrar Kheweul.com also joined ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade on stage to sign the 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement.
The event marks the beginning of the contract signing phase of the new gTLD program, an important milestone.
For applicants without outstanding objections, contention or Governmental Advisory Committee advice, signing a contract means only pre-delegation testing and the final transition to delegation remains.

86 passes and two failures in this week’s new gTLDs

ICANN has just published this week’s batch of new gTLD Initial Evaluation results, revealing 86 passing scores and two applications that must go to Extended Evaluation.
The two failures are .ged and .bcg.
The .ged bid, which is intended to represent General Educational Development, was filed by a joint venture of the American Council on Education and the big publisher Pearson.
It’s the first example of an application to receive passing scores on both its financial and technical questions but to still require Extended Evaluation anyway.
The applicant had proposed a registry service related to internationalized domain names that gave the evaluation panels reason to believe a deeper evaluation was needed.
Uniquely so far, Extended Evaluation is likely to cost this applicant more money, due to the cost of a Registry Services Evaluation Panel.
Boston Consulting Group applied for .bcg as a dot-brand and failed because it scored a zero on its “Financial Statements” question, as most other IE failures have to date.
This weeks passing scores belong to these applications:

.redstone .institute .website .airtel .bestbuy .education .charity .shouji .alstom .multichoice .reit .bible .holiday .deutschepost .chrysler .terra .cam .inc .farm .cars .florist .financial .bet .design .cafe .sale .lundbeck .latino .iveco .inc .dodge .security .global .food .tradershotels .design .bond .zappos .rwe .commbank .landrover .house .cars .blog .fish .amazon .adult .wine .group .property .free .living .maserati .beauty .amsterdam .foodnetwork .broker .design .sucks .fans .tushu .discount .glass .fashion .search .school .linde .off .office .miami .trust .red .boats .immo .repair .dstv .claims .iinet .soccer .inc .mail .toshiba .law .love .suzuki .africa

There are now 730 applications still in Initial Evaluation. So far 1,092 have passed and 13 have failed.

First new gTLD objection scalps claimed

Employ Media has killed off the Chinese-language gTLD .招聘 in the latest batch of new gTLD objection results.
Amazon and DotKids Foundation’s respective applications for .kids also appear to be heading into a contention set with Google’s bid for .kid, following the first String Confusion Objections.
All three objections were marked as “Closed, Default” by objection handler the International Center For Dispute Resolution a few days ago. No full decisions were published.
This suggests that the objectors have won all three cases on technicalities (such as the applicant failing to file a response).
Employ Media vice president for policy Ray Fassett confirmed to DI that the company has prevailed in its objection against .招聘, which means “recruitment” in Chinese and would have competed with .jobs.
The String Confusion Objection can be filed based on similarity of meaning, not just visual similarity.
What’s more, if the objector is an existing TLD registry like Employ Media, the only remedy is for the losing applicant to have their application rejected by ICANN.
So Hu Yi Global Information Resources, the .招聘 applicant, appears to be finished as far as this round of the new gTLD program is concerned.
But because there’s no actual ICDR decision on the merits of the case, it seems possible that it, or another company, could try for the same string in a future round.
In Google’s case, it had objected to both the Amazon and DotKids applications for .kids on string confusion grounds. The company is applying for .kid, which is obviously very similar.
The String Similarity Panel, which created the original pre-objection contention sets, decided that singular and plurals could co-exist without confusion. Not everyone agreed.
Because .kid is merely an application, not an existing TLD, none of the bids are rejected. Instead, they all join the same contention set and will have to work out their differences some other way.
Applicants are under no obligation to fight objections; they may even want to be placed in a contention set.

Afilias opens pre-regs on 30 new gTLDs

Afilias has started accepting expressions of interest on the 30 new gTLDs it has applied for.
A basic site launched today invites potential registrants to indicate which names they’d like to register in future and submit their email address for updates.
As usual, it’s free, no obligation, and provides more value to the registry than the registrant.
The strings covered are:

.移动 (info), .信息 (mobi), .DESI, .APP, .HEALTH, .LTD, .KIM, .BLUE, .PINK, .LOTTO, .MLS, .LGBT, .BLOG, .GREEN, .INC, .TEAM, .SHIKSHA, .MEMORIAL, .RADIO, .BET, .RED, .WINE, .LLC, .WEB, .ORGANIC, .MEET, .PET, .BLACK, .CASINO, .POKER, .VOTE, .VOTO

Many of these gTLDs are still contested and some haven’t yet passed Initial Evaluation, so the list may dwindle as time goes by.

Verisign lays out ‘buy once’ IDN gTLD plans

Verisign has finally clarified how it proposes to let existing registrants of internationalized domain names grab the matching domains in its 12 forthcoming IDN gTLDs.
The company has applied for transliterations of .com in nine non-Latin scripts and .net in three, but its applications were light on details about existing registrants’ rights.
But today Verisign senior vice president Pat Kane outlined precisely how name allocations will be handled.
At first glance it sounds like good news for existing IDN registrants, particularly domainers whose investments in IDN .com and .net domains are about to become much more valuable.
If you already own a .com domain that is an IDN at the second level, you will have exclusive rights to that IDN string in all other .com transliterations, but not .net transliterations.
That works the other way around too: if you own the IDN .net domain, you get the matching second level in all of Verisign’s .net transliterations.
Owning the Chinese word for “beer” in Latin .com would not give you rights to the Thai word for “beer” in the Thai transliteration of .com, but you could buy the Chinese equivalent.
The rules seem to apply to future registrations too.
You could register the Hebrew for “beer” in the Hebrew transliteration of .com and you would also get the exclusive right to that Hebrew string in Latin .com.
There would be no obligation, and you wouldn’t lose your right to register matching domains if you chose not to immediately exercise it, Kane said. He wrote:

Two primary objectives in our strategy to implement new IDN gTLDs are, where feasible, to avoid costs to consumers and businesses from purely defensive registrations in these new TLDs, as well as to avoid end-user confusion.

It all sounds pretty fair to me, based on Kane’s blog post.
There’s a hint that trademark rights protection mechanisms may complicate matters, which has apparently been discussed in a letter to ICANN, but if it’s been published anywhere I’ve been unable to find a copy.

.CO Internet looking for more registrars

.CO Internet is expanding its registrar channel with a new Request For Proposals.
The company wants would-be registrars to respond with the commitments they’re willing to make to market and promote .co domains, particularly in markets where .co is not currently popular.
Only ICANN-accredited registrars need apply.
Amusingly, registrars also need to be specifically accredited to sell .biz domains. Presumably this is due to .CO’s relationship with back-end provider Neustar, which also runs .biz.
The company has about 30 registrars right now, but many of those operate very large reseller networks, so there’s no shortage of places to buy a .co if you want one.
.CO deliberately kept its registrar numbers low — only 10 at launch — in order to cut down on abuse and to keep a tighter leash on gaming during the 2010 landrush process.
The RFP can be found here.