Introducing DomainIncite PRO

As you know, today is a Big Day in the domain name industry.
That’s right, today’s the day that I’m excited to announce the launch of DomainIncite PRO, the industry’s newest research and analysis service.
DomainIncite PRO is a DI sister site providing in-depth coverage of industry trends, company case studies, and analysis of ICANN’s new generic top-level domains program as it begins to roll out.
I hope the service will quickly become the domain name industry’s premier source of independent research and objective, vendor-neutral analysis.
Let me assure you that regular DI is not going anywhere. This blog will continue to break the latest domain name news, in our unique style, at least five days a week.
While DI will continue to publish shorter news articles, DomainIncite PRO will carry white papers in the 1,500 to 3,000-word range, often accompanied by downloadable data.
Some highlights of the content available to PRO subscribers today:

Five thousand strings that could get your gTLD application rejected
This paper analyzes a wide variety of scenarios in which new gTLD strings could be rejected by ICANN and provides a downloadable spreadsheet of over 5,000 specific banned strings — including brands, abbreviations and generic terms — that could cause an application to fall at the first hurdle.
How .CO Internet relaunched Colombia’s .co registry
This case study looks at .CO Internet’s strategy in the run-up to .co’s launch and during its first year of operations, exploring its successes and failures with regards marketing, sales, channel partnerships and trademark protection.
Domain name sales price database
To help new gTLD applicants with their premium domain name pricing strategies, we’re making available a database of almost 60,000 domain name sales prices that can be used as a helpful pricing reference.

There’s also a free downloadable white paper about new gTLDs written with absolute newbies in mind.
Expect to see a lot more content, with a big focus on new gTLDs, to start appearing soon.
In the near future, DomainIncite PRO will also begin to carry in-depth data-driven market share analysis of the existing gTLD registry space. This coverage will be expanded to cover all new gTLDs when they begin to launch early next year.
We will also provide ongoing analysis of live policy development within ICANN, helping new community members navigate the minefield of acronyms, procedures and personalities.
While translating ICANN into plain English is one of my key goals, make no mistake: DomainIncite PRO is interested in politics only insofar as it affects businesses.
Don’t expect to find long, tedious reports about interminable internet governance debates, unless the outcome is likely to have a tangible impact on somebody’s bottom line.
I can reveal that DomainIncite PRO’s first contributing analyst is Adam Smith, World Trademark Review‘s well-respected former Senior Reporter.
Adam covered the development of the new gTLD program for WTR between 2008 and late 2011. He knows his stuff and I’m very grateful to have him on board.
I hope to add more writers in the near future (if you’re interested in contributing, please get in touch).
Now the bad news. This great content doesn’t come for free.
Memberships are available on an annual subscription basis, and it’s priced for a corporate wallet.
As it’s a new service, and because this post basically represents a “soft” launch for regular DomainIncite readers, the introductory price for single-user annual subscription is $799.
Multi-user company licenses are also available at a discounted rate upon request, but I do not currently anticipate offering trial subscriptions.
I think the content available today already offers a compelling ROI case.
If DomainIncite PRO sounds like something that could benefit your business, why not check it out for yourself right now?

4 Comments Tagged: domainincite pro

SportAccord picks CORE for .sport gTLD bid

SportAccord, an international association of sporting federations, has picked CORE as its registry services provider for its .sport generic top-level domain application.
The organization, which has International Olympic Committee backing, has also confirmed that it will be applying for .sport as a “community” gTLD.
Community applications can avoid a costly auction in the event that their chosen gTLD string is contested and the applicant can meet a rigorous set of community support criteria.
With over 100 international sporting organizations, covering everything from football to tug of war, comprising its membership, SportAccord’s bid should be good for a few points on the Community Priority Evaluation, but success is by no means assured.
The Lausanne, Switzerland-based organization announced its intention to apply for .sport, issuing an RFP, back in September 2011.
I’m aware of at least two other organizations that have publicly announced potential .sport applications.
CORE currently runs the back-end for the .cat and .museum gTLDs.

4 Comments Tagged: .sport, core, ICANN, new gTLDs, new TLDs, sportaccord

Key-Systems sued over brand protection trademark

Israeli domain name registrar Domain The Net Technologies has filed a preemptive lawsuit against German competitor Key-Systems over their respective brand management trademarks.
According to the complaint, Domain The Net filed for a US trademark on the term “BrandShield”, which it uses to market brand protection services at brandshield.com.
Key-Systems, which runs a similar service called BrandShelter, filed an opposition to Domain The Net’s trademark application last October, due to the alleged potential for confusion.
Anticipating a possible lawsuit, Domain The Net has therefore sued first, asking the District Court in Virginia to declare that BrandShield does not infringe the BrandShelter trademark.
The complaint lists several dozen live brand+word trademarks to demonstrate that no one company should have exclusive rights to the word “brand”.
You can view the complaint, which was filed yesterday, in PDF format here.
(Hat tip: @GeorgeKirikos)

1 Comment Tagged: brandshelter, brandshield, cybersquatting, domain the net, key-systems, trademarks

Melbourne IT involved in 100+ gTLD applications

Melbourne IT says it has prepared applications for over 100 new generic top-level domains on behalf of clients including members of the Association of National Advertisers.
The registrar’s CEO, Theo Hnarakis, said in a press release:

Big brands from around the world have already engaged with Melbourne IT Digital Brand Services to help them apply for more than 100 new TLDs.
Big name companies in the financial sector, plus the retail and consumer goods industries have shown the most interest in applying so far, and roughly a quarter of the companies we are assisting are members of the Fortune Global 500. Applicants working with Melbourne IT also include members of the U.S. Association of National Advertisers.”

The company agrees with the emerging industry consensus which estimates 1,000 to 1,500 applications between Thursday and April 12, with roughly two-thirds of those “dot-brand” applications.
It’s an open industry secret that many companies ostensibly opposing the new gTLD program with the ANA are also preparing applications, but their level of enthusiasm is still open to question.
Anecdotally, many potential dot-brand applicants appear to be under the misapprehension that a new gTLD application is necessary to defend their brands from top-level cybersquatters, which is not the case.

1 Comment Tagged: .brand, dot-brand, ICANN, melbourne it, new gTLDs, new TLDs

Go Daddy gripe site relaunches with .co domain

Erstwhile Go Daddy gripe site No Daddy, formerly found at nodaddy.com, has been relaunched under new ownership at nodaddy.co.
The original site opened in 2007 as a place for customers to share “horror stories”, but was acquired by Go Daddy last July at around the same time it secured a reported $2.2 billion investment.
It’s still not entirely clear whether Go Daddy paid off the previous owners, or whether it was legal or other threats that caused the nodaddy.com domain to change hands.
The site once ranked second only to Go Daddy itself in Google search results for the company’s name.
The new site, NoDaddy.co, is unaffiliated with the previous owners.
The owner identifies himself as “AdverseVariable” and the domain is registered using a Whois privacy service offered by Bahamas-based registrar Internet.bs.
The new forum currently only has one post.

Comment Tagged: go daddy, nodaddy.co, nodaddy.com

ANA’s modest proposal: let us take over the new gTLD program or we’ll sue

The Association of National Advertisers has offered ICANN a risible last-minute “solution” to the outrage it has created over the new generic top-level domains program.
The ANA wants ICANN to create a temporary “Do Not Sell” list to protect trademark owners and intergovernmental organizations during the first application round, which begins Thursday.
While the first round is open, the ANA itself wants to takes over policy development for the program.
This is its “Proposed Way Forward” in full:

1. ICANN will proceed with its plan to begin accepting applications for new TLDs on January 12, as scheduled;
2. Concurrently, all NGOs, IGOs and commercial stakeholders concerned about protecting their brands will be given the opportunity to have those brands registered, without cost, on a temporary “Do Not Sell” list to be maintained by ICANN during the first application round (any interested party which does not want to have its brands on the Do Not Sell list and would rather apply for a TLD would be free to do so).
We will assemble a team from the interested constituencies to work with ICANN leadership during the first application round. If this group achieves consensus with respect to any proposals, those proposals will be voted on by the Board.
At the end of the first application round, should the parties continue to disagree, all parties will be free to pursue their legal and equitable rights without prejudice.

The alternative to adopting this proposal, ANA president Bob Liodice said in a letter to ICANN today, is “destructive and costly litigation”.
ICANN’s response should be provided “IMMEDIATELY”, Liodice wrote.
I can’t see him getting the answer he wants.
First, the ANA still seems to be worried about top-level cybersquatting, which any sane person can see is extremely unlikely to happen under the new gTLD program’s existing policies.
Second, it’s asking for ICANN to give anyone with a trademark the right to block a string matching that trademark at the top-level.
This may appear reasonable if you think a trademark is something like “Coca-Cola” or “Gucci” or “Google”.
But as soon as you realize that pretty much every word – “music”, “blog”, “web”, “London”, “Paris” – is trademarked, the idea of a Do Not Sell list becomes clearly ludicrous.
It would be a recipe for banning all gTLDs from the first application round.
Third, ICANN already has a mechanism for letting interested stakeholders achieve consensus on new trademark protection policies.
It’s called ICANN, and you don’t need to threaten litigation to participate. You just show up.
You can read the entire laughable ANA proposal here.

7 Comments Tagged: ana, association of national advertisers, cybersquatting, ICANN, new gTLDs

Trademark Clearinghouse coming in October

ICANN plans to have the Trademark Clearinghouse for new gTLDs up and running by October, according to documents released after this Thursday’s meeting of its board of directors.
The Trademark Clearinghouse is a central repository of trademark information that new gTLD registries will plug their systems into.
When a customer attempts to register a domain name in a new gTLD that matches a trademark in the Clearinghouse, they will receive a warning that they may be cybersquatting.
Nine companies applied for the position of Clearinghouse operator – as a paid service, it’s potentially a money-spinner – and ICANN expects to select one or more from a short-list of five in February.
According to the new ICANN document (pdf), twice-weekly talks between IP lawyers, registries and registrars are expected to finalize the Clearinghouse’s processes by March.
The system could go live by October, giving companies three months to submit their trademarks to the Clearinghouse before the first new gTLDs go live in early 2013, according to ICANN.

Comment Tagged: cybersquatting, ICANN, new gTLDs, trademark clearinghouse

ICANN adds confusion over second new gTLD round

ICANN’s board of directors met on Thursday to discuss the imminent launch of the new generic top-level domains program.
No decisions were made, which means the organization is still set to start accepting applications on January 12, as ICANN’s top officials have stated several times this week.
I hear that the TLD Application System is due to go live one minute after midnight (UTC) on Thursday, in fact, which means too-eager Californian applicants may be able to sign up as early as Wednesday afternoon.
Six briefing documents used at the meeting have been published, one of which deals with the all-important issue of the timing of the second (or “next” as ICANN prefers) application round.
It’s become increasingly apparent recently that lots of big brands think they’re being forced to defensively apply for their own trademarks as gTLDs in the first round.
Some registries, lawyers and new gTLD consultants are probably just as much to blame for this fearmongering as opponents of the program such as the Association of National Advertisers.
The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse has recently championed the cause of a firm date for a second-round application window, to make a “wait and see” strategy more realistic.
I’ve previously said that a first round stuffed with useless defensive dot-brands would make a mockery of the whole new gTLD program.
ICANN evidently agrees. The board briefing materials (pdf) state:

A timely second round will relieve pressure on the first round, reducing demand and:
o Reducing delegation rates, thereby relieving stability concern perceptions,
o Addressing concerns of some trademark owners that are critical of the process, relieving the perception of need for “defensive registration” at the top-level,
o Decreasing the number of applications relieves some pressure on specific operational issues such as the number of batches, instances of string contention, and the amount of time it will take to process all the applications. Fewer applications will increase the ability to process applications in an efficient manner.

The Applicant Guidebook is currently vague and even a little confusing on the timing of the second round.
Unfortunately, the new briefing materials, which attempt to give some clarity into ICANN’s thinking, appear to contain errors and potentially just confuse matters further.
The documents state “ICANN should publicly announce its intention to launch a subsequent round as soon as practicable after the one opening on 12 January 2012”.
So far so good.
However, ICANN has promised its Governmental Advisory Committee that it will complete two reviews before opening a second round: one into the effect of the first round on root zone stability, the other into the effectiveness of the new trademark protection mechanisms.
ICANN now states that the trademark study would start “one year after 75 gTLDs are in the root” and gives a clearly impossible date of February 2013 for this happening.
I’m guessing this is one of those silly typos we all sometimes make during the first week of a new year.
Given that the first new gTLDs will not be delegated until 2013, ICANN almost certainly meant to say that it expects to start the trademark review a year later in February 2014.
ICANN also sensibly notes that it “cannot commit to when we get consensus on the conclusions of a Trademark study”, which doesn’t really add clarity to the timeline either.
The document also states:

The other critical path is completion of the round 1 applications – this is uncertain because (a) we don’t know the number of batches that are required and (b) if we could start the second round while we finish up the objections and stuff from the first round. However, if there are four batches, initial evaluations for them would finish in March 2013, and nearly all applications should clear in the second quarter of 2014.

I assume, but the document does not state, that this is a reference to the root zone stability study, which under a strict reading of the Guidebook is supposed to happen after the first round has ended.
Unfortunately, the dates appear to be wrong again.
According to the Applicant Guidebook, the Initial Evaluation phase takes five months. Four batches would therefore take 20 months, which would give a March 2014 date for the end of initial evaluations and a second-quarter 2015 date for the final delegations.
Again, this is probably just one of those first-week-of-the-year brainfarts. I assume (hope) the ICANN board noticed the discrepancy too and based its discussions on the actual timeline.
There’s also the matter of ICANN’s review of the program’s effects on competition and consumer choice, which is mandated by its Affirmation of Commitments with the US Department of Commerce.
Unfortunately, it’s not yet clear even to ICANN whether this is a prerequisite for a second round, according to the briefing documents.
Commerce has a bit of a predicament here. On the one hand, it wants to ensure new gTLDs are good for internet users. On the other, it’s under a massive amount of pressure from the trademark lobby, which would benefit from clarity into the timeline for future application rounds.
Either way, the US government’s interpretation of the Affirmation is going to be a key factor in determining the second-round launch date.
In short, given what is known and expected, 2015 seems to be the earliest possible date for the second round, but a hell of a lot rides on how many applications are received.
In a blog post today, ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom said: “The issues should be settled before the application window closes on 12 April but their resolution is not essential before the window opens on 12 January.”
I disagree. If ICANN is serious about reducing defensive applications, it needs to provide an unambiguous public statement about the second round before it starts accepting checks from brand owners.
Naming a date may not be possible, but it needs to say something.

2 Comments Tagged: gac, ICANN, new gTLDs, new TLDs, second round

ICANN CEO job ad in The Economist [image]

Having spent the last six months mulling over the qualities its ideal CEO would possess, ICANN has started advertising the position to a wider audience.
This ad (click to enlarge) appears in the January 7-13 issue of The Economist.
ICANN says it is looking for “public interest-minded individual with a combination of financial management, diplomatic and organizational skills”.
The successful candidate will have “excellent management and leadership skills, positive and steady personality” and a “solid record of public, corporate, and/or academic experience at high international level”.
He or she will have to be committed to “integrity, trust, humility, technical excellence and public service”.
The salary is described as “commensurate with the scope and importance of the position”.
Rod Beckstrom, who intends to leave ICANN in July, is known to receive a base salary of $750,000 and bonuses that have bumped his total take-home to over $800,000.

Comment Tagged: ceo, ICANN, rod beckstrom

Dudu buys dudu.com for $1 million

The first big-figure domain name sale announcement of the year has me cackling.
A Dubai-based social networking site, Dudu, has paid $1 million for dudu.com, making one Chinese domainer a very happy man indeed.
Sedo brokered the deal over three months and announced the sale today.
Dudu was previously located at godudu.com.
The lesson to be learned here is so painfully obvious it’s barely worth mentioning: if you’re going to launch a brand and try to make it successful, first make sure you have a domain to match.
Before Dudu built up the brand, dudu.com was probably a five-figure sale.
To Dudu’s credit, it does not appear to have ever attempted a reverse domain name hijacking using the UDRP.
Alibek Issaev, chairman of Dudu, said in Sedo’s press release:

With the purchase of dudu.com, we will be able to match our platform’s brand with the exact domain name we need, and migrate from using godudu.com to this shorter version. This purchase means we don’t lose important traffic, and at the same time we ensure that visitors from around the globe will remember our brand’s name.

No dudu, Sherlock.

Comment Tagged: dudu, dudu.com, sedo