Pritz to head DNA trade group

Former ICANN chief strategy officer Kurt Pritz has just been named interim executive director of the Domain Name Association, the trade group formed this year to promote the domain industry.
Pritz will “apply his track record in teambuilding and bringing together diverse skillsets to the knowledgeable and talented members of the Domain Name Industry” the group said.
He will participate in a DNA session later this week here in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where ICANN is currently holding its 48th public meeting.
If you’re in BA, the two-hour session will be held from 3pm on Wednesday at the Alvear ART Hotel, Suipacha 1036.
The DNA opened its doors for membership last month, and currently counts the likes of Google, Donuts, Demand Media and Go Daddy among its top-paying members.

RightOfTheDot to manage .club’s premium strategy

.CLUB Domains has selected RightOfTheDot to manage its premium and founders program domains strategy.
The company named “a.club, 888.club, chess.club, poker.club, insurance.club, golf.club country.club, car.club” as examples of “category killer” names that RightOfTheDot will try to find homes for.
.CLUB signed its Registry Agreement with ICANN late last week and plans to go to Sunrise in January.
It’s among the top 30 most popular new gTLDs being pre-registered at 1&1 right now, and recently said it’s hoping to have five million domains under management within five years, an ambitious target.
RightOfTheDot is the new gTLD consultancy founded by domainers Mike Berkens and Monte Cahn.

Almost 15,000 trademarks registered in TMCH

The new gTLD program’s Trademark Clearinghouse has almost 15,000 trademarks registered, according to a spokesperson.
We’re told today that there’s an average of about two labels for each registered mark, and that about half of all the marks have been registered for multiple years.
The TMCH offers registrations for one, three or five years.
Trademarks in non-Latin scripts currently account for just 3% (so roughly 450) of the registrations, which may be a cause for concern given that IDNs gTLDs will be many of the first to launch Sunrise periods.
The TMCH spokesperson added that registrations of “previously abused labels”, under what we used to call the Trademark+50 policy, are currently “low” because the service was only recently launched.

Trademark Clearinghouse: early bird pricing ends tomorrow

Trademark owners take note: you have less than 24 hours to get your marks registered in the Trademark Clearinghouse if you want to take advantage of early bird discounted pricing.
A TMCH spokesperson told DI today that the early bird offer ends at 1200 UTC November 5. Its “agents” (registrars) were notified a week ago and today were given a final 24-hour grace period, she said.
This may come as something of a surprise to mark owners who haven’t been paying attention.
When the Clearinghouse went live in March, the TMCH said that the early registration offer would end when the first Sunrise period for the first new gTLD went live.
At the time, ICANN rules stated that registries would have to give 30 days notice before launching a Sunrise.
But these rules recently changed, giving registries the ability to launch immediately as long as the Sunrise runs for at least 60 days rather than the original 30.
And with dotShabaka Registry, one of the first four new gTLDs to go live, opting for the 60-day Sunrise, that means early bird pricing is ending sooner than might have been expected.
Rather than direct discounts, the early bird offer instead awards extra “status points” that can be accumulated to secure lower bulk registration prices.
Trademark owners would have to submit quite a lot of trademarks, or use an agent that is passing the discounts on to its customers, in order to qualify for the lower prices.

Search all new gTLD collision block lists

DI PRO subscribers can now see which strings appear most often in new gTLD registries’ block-lists and search for strings — such as trademarks or premium strings — that interest them.
We’ve just launched the New gTLD Collisions Database.
Currently, it indexes all 14,493 unique strings that ICANN has told the first 13 new gTLD registries to block — due to the risk of collisions with internal networks — when they launch.
By default the strings are ranked by how many gTLDs have been told to block them.
You’ll see immediately that “www” is currently blocked in all 13 registries, suggesting that it’s likely to be blocked in the vast majority of new gTLDs.
Users can also search for a string in order to see how many, and which, new gTLDs are going to have to block it.
We’re hoping that the service will prove useful to trademark owners that want to see which “freebie” blocked strings they stand to benefit from, and in which gTLDs.
For example, we can already see that 10 meaningful strings containing “nike” are to be blocked. For “facebook”, it’s four registries. For “google”, it’s currently three strings across six gTLDs.
The service will also hopefully be useful to registries that want to predict which strings ICANN may tell them to block. We’re seeing a lot of gambling terms showing up in non-gambling TLDs, for example.
Here’s a screenshot of sample output for the search “cars”.

As ICANN publishes lists for more gTLDs, the database will grow and become more useful and time-saving.
Comments, suggestions and bug reports as always to kevin@domainincite.com

Barrett launches new gTLD launch calendar

EnCirca’s Tom Barrett has launched a collaborative calendar to help spread the word about new gTLD launch dates.
Leveraging Google Apps, the service can be found at Calzone.org and is currently in a short beta open only to applicants and registries.
All new gTLD sunrise dates published by ICANN will be incorporated into the service, Barrett tells us, and the registries themselves are invited to add other useful deadlines, such as for founders programs.
Users will be able to synchronize the calendar with their own and receive alerts, he said. They’ll also be able to filter by categories of string, such as “finance” or “health”.

Two 2014 new gTLD conferences planned

Two new gTLD conferences with different focuses are planned for early 2014.
NamesCon is a new event “For Registries, Registrars and Registrants” planned by long-time domainer Richard Lau, due to be held somewhere in Las Vegas January 13 to 15.
The early line-up is looking more domainer-heavy than new gTLD conferences we’ve seen to date, which might make it a good opportunity for registries to network with investor “market makers”.
Momentum Consulting has also confirmed dates for its third Digital Marketing & gTLD Strategy Congress.
Set for March 3 to 4 at the Dream Hotel in New York, the site of the first conference earlier this year, the third event promises “real-world launch case studies timed to coincide with the anticipated delegation and launch of the initial wave of new TLDs” according to Momentum.
The Congress is a more brand-oriented event.
The first 25 people to buy tickets will apparently get full recordings of the recent London event thrown in.

Trademark+50 costs $75 to $200 a pop

The Trademark Clearinghouse has started accepting submissions under the new “Trademark+50” service, with prices starting at about $76.
It’s now called the Abused DNL (for Domain Name Label) service.
It allows trademark owners to add up to 50 additional strings — which must have been cybersquatted according to a court or a UDRP panel — to each record they have in the TMCH.
To validate labels found in court decisions, it will cost mark owners $200 and then $1 per abused string. For UDRP cases, the validation fee is $75.
If you’re on the “advanced” (read: bulk) fee structure, the prices drop to $150 and $50 respectively.
To add a UDRP case covering 25 domains to the Abused DNL would cost $100 in the first year and $25 a year thereafter, for example.
Adding a trademark to the TMCH costs between $95 and $150 a year, depending on your fee structure.

Third Bulgarian new gTLDs conference planned

Domain Forum, the Bulgarian new gTLDs conference, will run for a third time on November 1 in Sofia.
The one-day event, which will be free to attend and conducted in English, will have a focus this year on Cyrillic internationalized domain names, according to organizers.
Much of the agenda has yet to be finalized but confirmed speakers include consultant Stephane Van Gelder, Blacknight CEO Michele Neylon and Afilias business development director Francesco Cetraro.
Organizer UNINET also hopes to have an ICANN VP keynoting.
Domain Forum will take place at the National Palace of Culture in central Sofia.

Domain Name Association opens membership

The new Domain Name Association, which hopes to represent the interests of the domain name industry as a whole, has opened its doors to new members.
The DNA formed in January, named an interim board in April, and has spent the last several months conducting outreach and establishing its corporate structure, goals and membership rules.
Membership prices range from $1,000 to $50,000, with the make-up of the final board (estimated to be fewer than 20 directors) determined by which companies pay for the more expensive membership tiers.
Paying $50,000 will guarantee you a seat on the board, for example, while paying $5,000 makes your company eligible for, but not guaranteed, one of two reserved seats.
Speaking at the Digital Marketing & gTLD Strategy Congress in London two weeks ago, interim DNA chair Adrian Kinderis made no bones about the fact that the DNA is pay-to-play; it’s “not a democracy”.
It’s a trade group in the usual sense, in other words, borrowing nothing from ICANN’s multistakeholder model.
That said, ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade encouraged its creation and ICANN seems to generally support its goal.
That goal is to represent the entire domain name industry — registrars, registries, resellers, etc. Its mission statement is pretty succinct:

Promote the interest of the domain name industry by advocating the use, adoption, and expansion of domain names as the primary tool for users to navigate the Internet.

Promoting new gTLDs is its first priority.
The DNA operates two web sites: thedna.org for its members and whatdomain.org for internet end users.