XYZ counting standard sales as “premiums” because its fees are so expensive

Portfolio gTLD registry XYZ appears to be counting regular sales of domains in certain TLDs as “premium” wins, because the base reg fee is so high.

The company said in a recent blog post that it sold over 270 “premium” names in October, but it added the following caveat:

Premium XYZ Registry domains refer to premium domains for extensions with standard and premium domains, and XYZ’s premium namespaces such as .Cars, .Storage, .Tickets, .Security, etc.

So if a name in a .com-equivalent priced TLD such as .xyz had been flagged as a premium by the registry and sold for a few thousands bucks, that counts as a premium sale, but any sale at all in .cars, where all domains cost a few thousand bucks regardless of the second-level string, also counts as a premium.

This reporting practice appears to bring in .security, .storage, .protection, .car, .auto, and .theatre, which all retail for four figures as standard. It also includes .tickets, where you won’t get much change out of a grand. It doesn’t include the fourth member of the cars family, .autos, where domains are priced as .com-equivalent.

I’m not sure how I feel about this.

You can’t accuse the registry of being misleading — it’s disclosing what it’s doing pretty prominently mid-post, not even reducing the font size.

And you can’t reasonably argue that a standard $3,000 .cars domain, which renews at $3,000 a year, for example, has less claim to the adjective “premium” than a domain in .hair that has a premium-tier EPP code selling for $3,000 but renewing at $20.

It just feels weird to see the word used in this way for what appears to be the first time.

.autos priced waaay below its XYZ rivals

When XYZ.com tied up the automotive gTLD market by bringing .car, .cars, .auto and .autos into its portfolio last year, I speculated that a big price increase may be on the cards for .autos. I was wrong.

The registry has in fact dropped its wholesale prices by quite a lot, keeping .autos domains a fraction of the cost of their stable-brothers and competitive with .com.

XYZ said yesterday that the recommended retail price for .autos will be around $20 per year, compared to the $100 under previous owner Dominion.

The new pricing comes into effect June 14.

By contrast, .auto, .cars and .car continue to be priced at around $2,000 per year at the cheaper registrars. At others your renewal fee could be as high as $4,000.

The pricing makes .autos a much more affordable choice for the likes of smaller car dealerships and garages, as well as an option for domain investors not scared away by the risky world of new gTLDs.

Under Dominion, .autos never broke through the 500 domains under management mark. Its three siblings all have roughly 300 names in their zones, with a leaning towards corporate registrar sales.

Are 25x price increases on the cards as XYZ corners the cars market?

Grab-happy registry XYZ.com has expanded its stable of strings to 22 after buying five little-used gTLDs from Dominion Registries.

It recently came into control of .autos, .motorcycles, .homes, .yachts, and .boats, CEO Daniel Negari confirmed earlier this week.

Following XYZ’s buyout of .auto, .car and .cars from former joint venture partner UNR a couple months back, it seems the company now pretty much has a lock on the English-language automotive domain market.

This raises the question, so far unanswered by the registry, about whether .autos registrants could be about to face some of the steepest price increases the new gTLD market has seen to date.

XYZ’s .auto, .car and .cars currently command among the highest base prices in the market — about $2,500 at retail for a basic, non-premium name — while .autos has been chugging along at $100 per domain per year.

It would make perfect sense for the registry to give its new acquisition a 25x price increase to align it with the rest of the automotive portfolio, but so far the company is tight-lipped on the subject.

Fortunately, the current pool of .autos registrants is quite small — a little over 400 names, about the same as .auto but a couple hundred ahead of .cars and .car — so there would not be many customers to piss off.

Indeed, three of the other TLDs XYZ just bought have what you might generously call “growth potential”.

The only one of the five gTLDs to have more than 500 domains under management is .homes, which has more than 13,000.

With XYZ’s broader channel reach and superior marketing prowess, there’s certainly upside on the horizon.

Cars gTLD launch clears $1 million in EAP

There was a small turn-out for the premium launch of .cars, .car and .auto gTLDs, but the registry says it cleared over $1 million in revenue.
The three gTLDs are run by Cars Registry, a venture between Uniregistry and XYZ.com.
They all finished their pricey Early Access Periods yesterday and are due to enter general availability today.
The EAP started January 12 with prices of $45,000 per domain. In GA, they won’t cost you less than $2,000.
While zone files show almost no new domains appearing between January 12 and today — three or four per domain at most — Uniregistry CEO Frank Schilling said EAP was a “success”.
“More than 100 dealers and brands took advantage of sunrise and EAP,” he said.
It appears there are a few dozen domains not appearing in zone files yet.
The three gTLDs combined have brought in over $1 million during EAP, Schilling said.

.cars domains to start at $45,000, retail for $2,500

Cars Registry has set pricing for .car, .cars and .auto domains at crazy-high levels.
If you want to buy a domain in any of the three gTLDs on day one, it will cost you a whopping $45,000.
If you buy one during regular general availability, it’s likely to set you back $2,500.
The registry, a partnership of Uniregistry and XYZ.com, has set its registry fee at $2,000, according to an email sent to registrars this week.
That’s a buck higher than .sucks, one of the most expensive new gTLDs to launch to date.
The sunrise fee will be $3,000 — made up of the regular $2,000 fee plus an added $1,000. Again, that’s higher than .sucks.
The Early Access Period — which, as reported yesterday, has replaced the more usual landrush — will run for nine days with prices ranging from $45,000 to $5,000.
Compared to the usual models of XYZ.com and Uniregistry, which tend towards the mass-market, these prices are colossal.
I wonder how much the pricing was influenced by the fact that the registry has the car-related gTLD market almost entirely sewn up.
Its only potential competitor is .autos, which has been delegated for almost 18 months but has yet to even reveal its launch plans and probably isn’t going to be available to the mass market anyway.
Sunrise for all three gTLDS is due to start December 9, ending January 12. EAP will begin that day, and GA will start January 20.

XYZ and Uniregistry acquire .car from Google, launch joint venture

XYZ.com and Uniregistry have launched a joint venture to operate a trio of car-related new gTLDs, after acquiring .car from Google.
Cars Registry Ltd is a new company. It will launch .cars, .car and .auto later this year.
Uniregistry won .cars and .auto at auction last year. Google was the only applicant for .car.
It signed its ICANN contract in January but transferred it to Cars Registry a little under a month ago.
The newly formed venture plans to launch all three TLDs simultaneously in the fourth quarter this year.
.car is currently in pre-delegation testing. The other two are already in the root.
Cars Registry does not have the the car-related domain space completely sewn up, however.
Dominion Enterprises runs .autos, albeit with a plan to launch the TLD with restrictions that may well mean it does not directly compete with the other three TLDs.
Launch details for .cars, .car and .auto have not yet been released.
Judging by the gTLDs’ web site, they will run on the Uniregistry back-end.

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.

ICANN reveals gTLD objections appeals process

Two new gTLD applicants would get the opportunity to formally appeal String Confusion Objection decisions that went against them, under plans laid out by ICANN today.
DERCars and United TLD (Rightside), which lost SCOs for their .cars and .cam applications respectively, would be the only parties able to appeal “inconsistent” objection rulings.
DERCars was told that its .cars was too similar to Google’s .car, forcing the two bids into a contention set. But Google lost similar SCO cases against two other .cars applicants.
Likewise, Rightside’s .cam application was killed off by a Verisign SCO that stated .cam and .com were too similar, despite two other .cam applicants prevailing in virtually identical cases.
Now ICANN plans to give both losing applicants the right to appeal these decisions to a three-person panel of “Last Resort” operated by the International Centre for Dispute Resolution.
ICDR was the body overseeing the original SCO process too.
Notably, ICANN’s new plan would not give Verisign and Google the right to appeal the two .cars/.cam cases they lost.

Only the applicant for the application that was objected to in the underlying SCO and lost (“Losing Applicant”) would have the option of whether to have the Expert Determination from that SCO reviewed.

There seems to be a presumption by ICANN already that what you might call the “minority” decision — ie, the one decision that disagreed with the other two — was the inconsistent one.
I wonder if that’s fair on Verisign.
Verisign lost two .cam SCO cases but won one, and only the one it won is open for appeal. But the two cases it lost were both decided by the same ICDR panelist, Murray Lorne Smith, on the same grounds. The decisions on .cam were really more 50-50 than they look.
According to the ICANN plan, there are two ways an appeal could go: the panel could decide that the original ruling should be reversed, or not. The standard of the review is:

Could the Expert Panel have reasonably come to the decision reached on the underlying SCO through an appropriate application of the standard of review as set forth in the Applicant Guidebook and procedural rules?

The appeals panelists would basically be asked to decide whether the original panelists are competent or not.
If the rulings were not reversed, the inconsistency would remain in place, making the contention sets for .car, .cars and .cam stay rather confusing.
ICANN said it would pay the appeals panel’s costs.
The plan (pdf) is now open for public comment.

Conflicting gTLD objection decisions to get appeals process?

ICANN seems to be considering an appeals process for new gTLD applicants that feel they’ve been wronged by dubious String Confusion Objection decisions.
But the process might be limited to applicants for .car, .cars and .cam.
In a resolution this Wednesday, ICANN’s New gTLD Program Committee said:

the NGPC is considering potential paths forward to address the perceived inconsistent Expert Determinations from the New gTLD Program String Confusion Objections process, including implementing a review mechanism. The review will be limited to the String Confusion Objection Expert Determinations for .CAR/.CARS and .CAM/.COM.

Why only those strings? I’m guessing it’s because the conflicting decisions would make for extremely confusing contention sets.
There were three SCOs against .cars applications, filed by Google, which has applied for .car. Google won one case but lost the other two.
That would mean that Google’s .car application would be in contention with one of the applicants but not the other two, hardly a fair outcome.
Similarly, Verisign objected to five .cam applications due to their similarity to .com. It won one and lost the other four.
The NGPC resolution calls for the publication, for comment, of a reviews process designed to untangle this mess. It does not appear to have been published yet.
But it seems that whatever ICANN has come up with will not apply to other applicants who feel they’ve been wronged by odd SCO, or other objection, decisions.

Interview: Atallah on new gTLD objection losers

Filing a lawsuit against a competitor won’t stop ICANN rejecting your new gTLD application.
That’s according to Akram Atallah, president of ICANN’s Generic Domains Division, who spoke to DI yesterday about possible outcomes from new gTLD objection rulings.
He also said that applicants that believe they’ve been wronged by the objection process may have ways to appeal the decisions and addressed what happens if objection panels make conflicting decisions.
Lawsuits won’t stay ICANN’s hand
In light of the lawsuit by Del Monte International GmbH against Del Monte Corp, as reported by Domain Name Wire yesterday, I asked Atallah if ICANN would put applications on hold pending the outcome of legal action.
The GmbH lost a Legal Rights Objection filed by the Corp, which is the older company and owner of the “Del Monte” trademark pretty much everywhere, meaning the GmbH’s bid, under ICANN rules, must fail.
Atallah said lawsuits should not impact ICANN’s processes.
“For us it’s final,” Atallah said. “If they have to go outside and take legal action then the outcome of the legal action will be enforceable by law and we will have to abide by it. But from our perspective the [objection panel’s] decision is final.”
There might be ways to appeal
In some cases when an applicant loses an objection — such as a String Confusion Objection filed by an existing TLD or an LRO filed by a trademark owner — the only step left is for it to withdraw its application and receive whatever refund remains.
There have been no such withdrawals so far.
I asked Atallah whether there were any ways to appeal a decision that would lead to rejection.
“The Applicant Guidebook is very clear,” he said. “When an applicant loses an objection, basically their application will not proceed any further. We would like to see them withdraw their application and therefore finish the issue.”
“Of course, as with anything ICANN, they have some other avenues for asking for reconsidering the decision,” he added. “Basically, going to the Ombudsman, filing a Reconsideration Request, or even lobbying the board or something.”
I wondered whether the Reconsideration process would apply to decisions made by third parties such as arbitration panels, and Atallah admitted that the Guidebook was “murky” on this point.
“There are two mentions in the Guidebook of this, I think,” he said. “One mentions that it [the panel’s decision] is final — the application stops — the other mentions that it is advice to staff.”
That seems to be a reference to the Guidebook at 3.4.6, which states:

The findings of the panel will be considered an expert determination and advice that ICANN will accept within the dispute resolution process.

This paragraph suggests that ICANN staff have to accept the objection panel’s decision. That would make it an ICANN decision to reject the application, which can be challenged under Reconsideration.
Of course, the Reconsideration process has yet to see ICANN change its mind on any matter of substance. My feeling is that to prevail you’d at a minimum have to present the board with new information not available at the time the original decision was made.
What if different panelists reach opposite conclusions?
While the International Centre for Dispute Resolution has not yet published its panels’ decisions in String Confusion Objection cases, a few have leaked out.
(UPDATE: This turns out not to be correct. The decisions have been published, but the only way to find them is via obscured links in a PDF file buried on the ICDR web site. Way to be transparent, ICDR.)
I’ve read four, enough to see that panelists are taking diverse and sometimes opposing views in their decision-making.
For instance, a panelist in .car v .cars (pdf) decided that it was inappropriate to consider trademark law in his decision, while the panelist in .tv v .tvs (pdf) apparently gave trademark law a lot of weight.
How the applicants intend to use their strings — for example, one may be a single-registrant space, the other open — seems to be factoring into panelists’ thinking, which could lead to divergent opinions.
Even though Google’s .car was ruled not confusingly similar to Donuts’ .cars, it seems very possible that another panelist could reach the opposite conclusion — in one of Google’s other two .cars objections — based on trademark law and proposed usage of the gTLD.
If that were to happen, would only one .cars application find itself in the .car contention set? Would the two contention sets be linked? Would all three .cars applications wind up competing with .car, even if two of them prevailed against Google at the ICDR?
It doesn’t sound like ICANN has figured out a way to resolve this potential problem yet.
“I agree with you that it’s an issue to actually allow two panels to review the same thing, but that’s how the objection process was designed in the Guidebook and we’d just have to figure out a way to handle exceptions,” Atallah said.
“If we do get a case where we have a situation where a singular and a plural string — or any two strings actually — are found to be similar, the best outcome might be to go back to the GNSO or to the community and get their read on that,” he said. “That might be what the board might request us to do.”
“There are lots of different ways to figure out a solution to the problem, it just depends on how big the problem will be and if it points to an unclear policy or an unclear implementation,” he said.
But Atallah was clear that if one singular string is ruled confusing to the plural version of the same string, that panel’s decision would not cause all plurals and singulars to go into contention.
“If a panel decides there is similarity between two strings and another panel said there is not, it will be for that string in particular, it would not be in general, it would not affect anything else,” he said.
ICANN, despite Governmental Advisory Committee advice to the contrary, decided in late June that singular and plural gTLDs can coexist under the new regime.