Melbourne IT holding new gTLD trademarks summit

Melbourne IT will hold a half-day conference on trademark protection in new gTLDs next month in Washington DC.
Google, Microsoft, Donuts, and the Association of National Advertisers are among those expected to take part in the discussion.
The meeting follows on from Melbourne IT’s recent anti-cybersquatting proposal, which calls for stronger protections for brands that are frequent targets of trademark infringement.
The panel includes many familiar faces from ICANN meetings. Applicant interests are represented, albeit by a minority of the panelists.
It will be moderated by Melbourne IT chief strategy officer (and ICANN vice-chair) Bruce Tonkin. Here’s the full line-up:

Andrew Abrams, Trademark Counsel, Google
James L. Bikoff, Partner, Silverberg, Goldman & Bikoff
Steve DelBianco, Executive Director, NetChoice and Vice Chair Policy Coordination, ICANN GNSO Commercial Business Users Constituency
Dan Jaffe, Group EVP Government Relations, Association of National Advertisers
Jon Nevett, Co-Founder, Donuts
Russell Pangborn, Associate General Counsel – Trademarks, Microsoft
Craig Schwartz, General Manager – Registry Programs, BITS/The Financial Services Roundtable
Brian J. Winterfeldt, Partner, Steptoe & Johnston and ICANN GNSO Counselor (Intellectual Property Constituency)

The event starts at 1.30pm local time at the Capital Hilton in DC on September 18. An RSVP is needed. There’s no official word on remote participation yet.

Refunds uncertain as .nxt says sorry for cancelation

It’s not yet clear whether people who paid for tickets for the .nxt conference will get full refunds.
In an apologetic email sent to attendees last night, organizer Kieren McCarthy said that .nxt is “trying to recoup” money already paid to the conference venue. The email states in part:

For a number of reasons – the most significant being the fact that the ICANN process is still in flux – we were not able to get the number of attendees or sponsors needed.
Having communicated with a large number of people that the conference was directly aimed at, the conclusion would appear to be: right idea, wrong time. The conference was designed as a meeting place for a new industry to meet and interact. It is now clear that that effort was premature.
Unfortunately that does not resolve the fact that you are currently out of pocket, whether through a conference ticket, hotel room or flight to London.
.Nxt is currently trying to recoup money we have paid to the hotel venue so we are in a position to reimburse at least some of those costs. We will keep in touch with any developments.

Fewer than 100 people were registered for the $950-a-ticket three-day event, .nxt said. The first two conferences, held in San Francisco last year, attracted closer to double that number.
The company plans to offer some of its planned sessions online instead, according to the email and a statement on the conference web site.
McCarthy is currently calling would-be attendees to explain the situation. Many have been understanding, according to the email.
Some attendees have told us they want full refunds for their tickets and hotel rooms, when the hotel was booked via .nxt. Recouping money spent on airfare is a different matter, of course.
The conference, which also left some attendees out of pocket when it was postponed in June, is unlikely to return.

Confirmed: .nxt conference canceled

The .nxt conference on new gTLDs has indeed been canceled, according to organizer Kieren McCarthy.
The show was expected to run next week, August 29-31, in London, following two successful events in San Francisco last year.
It was originally expected to run in June, but was postponed in May due to ICANN-related program delays.
I had planned to hold off posting the news until I had the full details, but I’ve received several emails this morning from people wondering what was going on so I thought I’d share what I know.
McCarthy is currently phoning attendees individually to explain the situation, so if you’re already a paid-up delegate I expect you’ll be getting a call soon. An announcement is expected later today.
ARI Registry Services tweeted this morning that .nxt is not offering refunds, but I cannot confirm that at this time.
More when we get it…

Bulgarian domain show returns for second year

Domain Forum, the Bulgarian conference on new gTLDs that ran in Sofia late last year, is to return.
While the agenda has yet to be confirmed, the dates have. The event will run November 15 and November 16 at the Grand Sofia Hotel.
The scope of the show seems to be a little broader than just new gTLDs this time around, with sessions on domain name technology such as DNSSEC and intellectual property also planned.
I’d hazard a guess that Bulgaria’s ongoing quest for its own Cyrillic IDN ccTLD will also take a prominent role in discussions.

Architelos launches new gTLD anti-abuse tool

Architelos, having consulted on about 50 new gTLD applications, has refocused on its longer-term software-based game plan with the recent launch of a new anti-abuse tool for registries.
NameSentry is a software-as-a-service offering, currently being trialed by an undisclosed number of potential customers, designed to make it easier to track abusive domains.
Architelos gave us a demo of the web site yesterday.
The service integrates real-time data feeds from up to nine third-party blocklists – such as SURBL and SpamHaus – into one interface, enabling users to see how many domains in their TLD are flagged as abusive.
Users can then drill down to see why each domain has been flagged – whether it’s spamming, phishing, hosting malware, etc – and, with built-in Whois, which registrar is responsible for it.
There’s also the ability to generate custom abuse reports on the fly and to automate the sending of takedown notices to registrars.
CEO Alexa Raad and CTO Michael Young said the service can help streamline the abuse management workflow at TLD registries.
Currently, Architelos is targeting mainly ccTLDs – there’s more of them – but before too long it expects start signing new gTLD registries as they start coming online.
With many new gTLD applicants promising cleaner-than-clean zones, and with governments leaning on their ccTLDs in some countries, there could be some demand for services such as this.
NameSentry is priced on a subscription basis, based on the size of the TLD zone.

.sx denies .sex gTLD objection rumor

The CEO of SX Registry has denied rumors that the company already plans to object to the two .sex new gTLD applications, but has not yet ruled out such a move.
The company runs Sint Maarten’s new ccTLD, .sx, and gossip at the ICANN meeting in Prague last month suggested that an objection or two against .sex might be made on confusing similarity grounds.
The rumors were fueled in part by SX Registry’s sexy launch marketing.
But in a recent email to DI, Normand Fortier wrote:

At this time SX Registry is still reviewing the impact of various gTLD applications and contrary to some published rumors, has not taken any official position or decision regarding a future course of action.

Existing ccTLD operators are allowed to file String Confusion Objections against gTLD applications, if they feel there’s a risk of confusion if the gTLD is approved.
And .sx/.sex is far from a unique case.
In fact, of the 375 applications for three-letter gTLDs in the first round, 304 have only one character variance with one or more existing ccTLDs, according to DI PRO’s string similarity analysis.
ICANN’s Sword algorithm, which compares the visual similarity of strings, gives .sex a score of 57% against .sx.
I’ve checked every three-character gTLD application against every existing ccTLD and found dozens of proposed gTLDs with much higher similarity scores when compared to ccTLD strings.
The full results are available to DI PRO subscribers over here.

Dispute over ‘confusing’ new gTLD company names

Is this the first “confusing similarity” fight to emerge from ICANN’s new gTLD program?
Two new UK outfits are involved in a dispute about their very similar company names, it has emerged.
TLD Registry Services seems to have come first. It’s an offshoot of Island Networks, the registry manager for the Channel Islands country-code TLDs .gg and .je.
According to co-founder Nigel Roberts, the company plans to offer registry services to existing TLDs using the CoCCA platform and has already made headway with a few potential clients.
TLD Registrar Services, on the other hand, is affiliated with CentralNic, the relatively successful new gTLD registry back-end provider.
Judging by its placeholder web site, this company plans to offer white-label registrar services to new gTLD operators such as dot-brands.
Roberts is irked that CentralNic picked a name for its company so similar to his own, particularly given that “registry” and “registrar” are often used interchangeably outside of the domain industry.
“We’ve recently asked the Secretary of State to look into how this situation came to pass,” he said. “It’s less than ideal for both parties. We are sure they are just as keen not to be confused with us, as we are keen not to be confused with them.”
Ben Crawford, CEO of CentralNic and chairman of TLD Registrar Services, said he was not aware of a dispute over the name.
“One of our employees was approached at Prague by someone from a company called TLD Registry Services – a company nobody in our business had ever heard of before,” he said.
“They expressed concern that our company names are too similar to each others’. We will consider their concerns and our options in due course.”
With both companies barely out of stealth mode, it’s probably something of a squall in a teacup at the moment, but it does highlight how tricky it can be to find a descriptive company name in this industry.
We could of course just be looking at a profound lack of imagination here, and I’m just as guilty as the rest.
DI is published by TLD Research Ltd, which appears directly after TLD Registrar Services Ltd and TLD Registry Services LLP in the UK’s Companies House register of companies.

First new gTLD registry hub provider launches

The first effort to provide a centralized “hub” between domain name registrars and new generic top-level domain registries has hit the market.
Norwegian new gTLD consultant/applicant CloudNames has launched The Registry Hub, and says it will offer more than 70% of its equity to the first companies that sign up for the service.
The problem it wants to address is that of complexity.
With hundreds of new mass-market gTLDs likely to appear over the next few years, it will be hard for registrars to keep track of them all.
The Registry Hub says it will provide a “technical, legal and commercial proxy” between registries and registrars.
It’s not entirely dissimilar to the business models of the reseller-oriented registrars that we see today.
One problem it hopes to tackle is paying registry fees.
It’s standard in the domain name industry today for registrars to pay their registry fees in advance – leaving a deposit with each of the registries they work with, which they chip away at over time.
That’s nice for the registry’s cash-flow, but it’s not going to be great for smaller registrars in a world with a few hundred new gTLDs they might want to sell.
These hub services – I’m expecting to see more announce themselves, soon — would consolidate deposits to make it commercially easier for smaller registrars to sell many more gTLDs.
Smart new gTLD registries will probably find market adoption easier if they can figure out ways to avoid this deposit problem entirely, perhaps by switching to a post-payment system.
The Registry Hub would take a small fee for each domain name registered through its service.

Three more digital archery services launch

Surely the market must be saturated by now?
With a little over a week left before ICANN shuts down its digital archery new gTLD batching mechanism, three more companies are vying for applicants’ business.
We’ve received three press releases from newcomers this week, which I believe brings the total to eight.
Of course, it’s looking somewhat possible that digital archery will prove to be irrelevant, should ICANN decide to abandon batching altogether next.
In no particular order, these are the new ones:
Timestamp Technology
American. Affiliated with Nations Media Partners, Timestamp says it will offer applicants a 150% refund if it fails to get them into the first batch. It costs $20,000 for a single application.
MySingleShot
Bulgarian. Affiliated with Uninet. Says 90% of its shots come within 10ms of target. It’s a software play, with licenses selling for $1,000. If you want somebody to take the shot for you, it’s an extra $100 per TLD.
Digital Archery Hotshots
British. Run by Vladimir Shadrunov, a former Telnic executive now gTLD consultant. Fees not disclosed on the web site, but claims to have a “guaranteed lowest price”.

How Uniregistry wants to make Whois “two-way”

If someone uses a Whois database to look up personal information such as your home address and phone number, wouldn’t it be nice to know a little something about them, too?
That’s the philosophy behind one of Uniregistry’s more interesting new gTLD policies, according to Frank Schilling, founder of the new new gTLD portfolio applicant.
Uniregistry has applied for dozens of gTLDs and says it has a “registrant-centered” outlook that extends to the mandatory thick Whois databases.
If its gTLDs are approved, the company will record the IP addresses of people doing Whois queries and make the records available to its registrants, Schilling said.
He suggested that Whois users may have to give up more info about themselves, in certain cases, too.
“To get certain pieces of information, you’ll have to agree to share some information about yourself,” Schilling said in an interview with DI yesterday.
Registrants would be able to view archived data about who’s been looking them up, which could help them during subsequent legal disputes about names, or during sales negotiations.
For domainers, this could be handy. Imagine you own the domain soft.drink and you receive a low-ball offer from a random stranger you suspect might be a proxy for a large corporation. Wouldn’t it be nice to know Coca-Cola has recently been checking out your Whois?
It’s going to be interesting to see how IP interests and law enforcement agencies – the two ICANN lobbies most deeply invested in Whois accuracy – react to Uniregistry turning the tables.