Delay not certain as new gTLD contracts reopened

The launch window for new gTLDs may have just got pushed back another month or two, following the announcement of a new 42-day comment period on registry and registrar contracts.
But ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade said he’s looking at ways to streamline the process to offset the delays.
During the public forum in Beijing yesterday, ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade said that he’d cancelled a scheduled April 20 meeting of its board of directors, during which the new agreements were targeted for approval.
Instead, new versions of the 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement and new gTLDs base Registry Agreement will be posted for public comment next week.
As these are expected to be the final versions of both documents, they’re also expected to have full comment periods of 42 days — 21 for comments and 21 for replies.
“I believe that putting the last version of RAA for 2013 out for full public comment process is actually strengthening that agreement,” Chedhade said today. “It makes it an agreement of the community.”
For the Registry Agreement, Chehade said talks with registries are going well and that he hopes to have a version ready for public comment agreed with negotiators in less than a week.
Assuming an April 19 start, that puts the earliest possible date for ICANN board approval at May 31, assuming the board waits for the comment period to end before giving it the rubber stamp.
Before the contracts are approved, they can’t be signed by registries and registrars, and before they are signed new gTLD applicants cannot progress to the final pre-launch stages of the delegation process.
But Chehade is weighing an idea put forward during the public forum by Donuts’ Jon Nevett: why not allow applicants to complete pre-delegation technical testing before contract signing?
“We could potentially do something about advancing this step ahead of contracting, finding a way to start pre-delegation testing before contracting is done,” Chehade said.

First new gTLD to fail evaluation revealed

With 132 new gTLD applications in receipt of their Initial Evaluation results, the first to fail has been revealed.
The failed application was for العلیان., an Arabic dot-brand filed by Olayan Investments Company, a 65-year-old privately held Saudi conglomerate.
It failed IE on financial grounds, according to its published results (pdf).
To pass the financial portion of the evaluations, applicants must score a minimum of eight points, scoring at least one point on each of the six questions.
While Olayan did score eight, it scored a zero on question 45, “Demonstration of Financial Capability”, which asks applicants to file audited or unaudited financial statements.
It appears that the applicant in this case did not provide enough information to be evaluated either during the application itself or in response to ICANN’s “clarifying questions”.
The application is now categorized as “Eligible for Extended Evaluation” by ICANN, meaning Olayan can provide extra information in an attempt to pass the failed question.
There’s no fee to do so in this case, but there would be a delay.
ICANN has so far delivered IE results for 132 applications for applications with priority queue numbers up to 149. Every other result to date has been a “pass”.

GAC delivers sweeping advice that will delay scores of new gTLDs by months

ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee has issued the kiss of death to two new gTLD applications and sweeping advice that will delay many, many more.
In its Beijing communique, issued this hour, the GAC as expected delivered advice against whole categories of gTLDs and provided a lengthy but “non-exhaustive” list of affected bids.
First, the GAC said that the .africa bid filed by DotConnectAfrica and the .gcc bid filed by GCCIX WLL should be rejected. Those were full consensus objections.
Two gTLDs related to Islam: .islam and .halal, have non-consensus objections, and will now have to be considered by the ICANN board of directors directly.
The GAC also said it needed more time, until ICANN’s meeting in Durban this July, to consider delivering specific advice against 14 more:

the GAC advises the ICANN Board to: not proceed beyond Initial Evaluation with the following strings: .shenzhen (IDN in Chinese), .persiangulf, .guangzhou (IDN in Chinese), .amazon (and IDNs in Japanese and Chinese), .patagonia, .date, .spa, .yun, .thai, .zulu, .wine, .vin

On the issue of plurals versus singulars, the GAC said ICANN should “Reconsider its decision to allow singular and plural versions of the same strings.” This affects about 60 applications.
But it doesn’t end there.
As predicted, the GAC has also issued swathes of advice against scores of proposed gTLDs in 12 categories: children, environmental, health and fitness, financial, gambling, charity, education, intellectual property, professional services, corporate identifiers, generic geographical terms and inherently governmental functions.
A “non-exhaustive” list of applications has been provided for each category, covering well over 100, setting the stage for a fight over inclusion for any application that the GAC forgot about.
If the GAC gets its way, any application that falls into one of these categories will have to have enhanced regulations governing Whois, abuse mitigation, and security.
The GAC also has its say on “closed generics”, which it calls “exclusive registry access” strings. They should only be awarded if they serve a public interest purpose, the GAC said.
In short, the advice is extraordinarily broad and seems to delegate the considerable work of picking through the mess to ICANN.
More analysis later…

Plural gTLDs give ICANN huge credibility risk

Can .pet and .pets co-exist peacefully on the internet? Or would they create such confusion among internet users that the whole new gTLD program would look irresponsible and foolish?
That’s the question ICANN is due to face today, as constituents line up at the public forum in Beijing to question its board of directors about the problem of plurals in new gTLDs.
The Governmental Advisory Committee, the Business Constituency, the Intellectual Property Constituency and others have all openly questioned the sanity of allowing plurals in recent days.
Right now there are 59 collisions between singular and plural gTLD applications (in English, at least, according to my analysis), involving 23 unique string pairs.
These are: .accountant(s), .auto(s), career(s), .car(s), .coupon(s), .cruise(s), .deal(s), .fan(s), .game(s), .gift(s), .home(s), .hotel(s), .kid(s), .loan(s), .market(s), .new(s), .pet(s), .photo(s), .review(s), .sport(s), .tour(s), .web(s) and .work(s).
None of these singular/plural clashes are currently in contention sets with each other, meaning there’s nothing to stop them all being delegated by ICANN. We could have a .loan alongside a .loans a year from now.
It seems to be only common sense that these clashes will cause frequent confusion. I doubt many would pass the longstanding “shouted across a crowded bar” test for URL clarity.
Would you want to register a .photo domain if you knew .photos was also available, and vice versa? If you did, wouldn’t you also want to register the .photos equivalent, just in case?
That’s one of the things ICANN’s commercial stakeholders are worried about: 23 extra TLDs means 23 extra defensive registrations for every brand they want to protect.
But there’s also the risk that gTLD registries that are successful in this application round will feel obliged to apply for the plurals of their strings in future rounds for defensive purposes.
The plurals issue also highlights shortcomings in how the new gTLD program was structured.
Why is this happening?
Unless two companies applied for the exact same strings, there are only two ways they could end up in a contention set together.
The first way was if the String Similarity Panel decided that the two strings were too visually similar to be allowed to co-exist, and that didn’t happen in the case of plurals. The panel only decided two things in the end: that I and l are confusingly similar, and that rn and m are confusingly similar.
To date, nobody except the Panel and ICANN knows what the logic behind this decision was, but it appears to be based on a very narrow (though not unreasonable) interpretation of what constitutes visual similarity.
The second way to end up in a contention set was to file a successful String Confusion Objection, or to be on the receiving end of one.
But of the 33 such objections filed, only 11 were filed against plurals, covering only six new gTLD strings in total: .pets, .tours, .webs, .games, .cars, and .kids. There was also an objection to .tvs, due to a clash with the existing ccTLD .tv.
(UPDATE: it appears that only approximately half of the String Similarity Objections filed have actually been revealed to date).
The main reason there weren’t more objections is that only existing registries and new gTLD applicants had standing to file an objection. Nobody else was allowed to.
Applicants were of course disincentivized from filing objections. Winning a String Confusion Objection doesn’t kill off your rival if you’re an applicant, it merely places both applications in a contention set.
Being in a contention set means you’re going to have to pay money to get rid of your competitor, either by negotiating some kind of private deal or by punching it out at auction.
By not filing objections, applicants in singular/plural situations risk looking like they don’t care about user confusion or are blasé about forcing defensive registrations.
(And by defensive registrations, remember here we’re not only talking about trademark owners, we’re talking about every potential future registrant in those gTLDs.)
They do have the slight excuse that they were only given a week or so to file objections after the results of the String Similarity Panel’s deliberations, delayed several times, were revealed.
There’s also the possibility that some of the apparent clashes won’t be as big of a concern in the marketplace due to, for example, registration restrictions.
What happens next?
The GAC is almost certain to issue advice about plurals in the next day or two, having brought the topic up with ICANN’s board of directors earlier this week.
The Business Constituency is also expected to make a few proposals directly to the board during the Public Forum in Beijing, Thursday afternoon local time.
The BC is likely to suggest, for example, that if one String Similarity Objection decision finds that a plural and a singular are confusingly similar, then that ruling should apply to all plural clashes, even if no objection has been filed.
It’s an audacious idea: it would certainly do the trick, but it would require some severe goal-post moving by ICANN at a time when it’s already under fire for pulling last-minute stunts on applicants.
It would also risk capturing fringe cases of strings that look plural but, in the context they are used in everyday language, are not (such as .new and .news).
Without some kind of action, however, ICANN is pretty much guaranteed to attract negative publicity.
Looking like it’s the stooge of the domain name industry, forcing regular registrants to double-buy their domains to the enrichment of registries and registrars, could look bad.

Donuts “almost doubles” $100m funding for new gTLD auctions

Somebody thinks new gTLDs will be a money-spinner.
Portfolio applicant Donuts, which is involved in 307 applications, has just announced a second funding round, greatly increasing its new gTLD contention set war-chest.
(UPDATE: This article originally stated, erroneously, that the funding was to the tune of $100 million. The exact amount has not actually been disclosed. Apologies for the error.)
It follows a $100 million funding round last year.
While the new amount was not disclosed, the deal “almost doubled” its funding, according to a press release, strongly suggesting it’s of a similar amount.
Existing investor Generation Partners and new investor Columbia Partners Private Capital were both involved in the round.
The company announced its first $100 million investment last year.
CEO Paul Stahura said the money was earmarked for new gTLD contention sets, many of which will be resolved at auction, and that “Donuts has further access to additional capital should the need arise”.
In a press release, he said:

We intended from the beginning to secure the gTLDs for which we applied. We enjoy tremendous support from our stockholders and lenders. This was an oversubscribed round that nearly doubles our capacity to compete. Our investors believe as strongly as we do that new gTLDs will bring relevance and specificity to registrants who have few usable choices today for Internet identities. This additional capital supports that belief, and we intend to deploy it to bring new gTLDs to market.

Registries still angry despite ICANN concessions on new gTLD contract

Domain name companies are coming close to agreement with ICANN on two critical new contracts, but there was still substantial skepticism and anger on display in Beijing yesterday.
It was revealed during a session at ICANN 46 that the long-running negotiations on the 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement are now pretty much done, with apparent compromise from both sides.
In addition, the proposed Registry Agreement for new gTLDs has been toned down to make it more acceptable to applicants, with ICANN apparently confident that agreement can be reached soon.
But while registrars seemed relatively content with their outcome, registries appear to still be very upset indeed, largely due to the new “special amendments” process that continues to be on the table.
This unilateral-right-to-amend proposal, which ICANN sprung on the industry in February, has been watered down along the lines that we reported last week.
The scope of the amendment process has been narrowed to items outside the “picket fence” that surrounds ICANN’s regulatory jurisdiction, and there are a few more ways companies can head off ICANN intervention.
“It’s not quite a unilateral amendment process any more, we’ve built in a lot of safeguards,” ICANN senior counsel Samantha Eisner told the meeting.
What’s new in the RAA?
These are some of the other things that have been agreed since the last draft of the RAA was posted a month ago.

• Privacy opt-out on Whois. Registrars based in places such as Europe, which has stronger data protection laws than the US, will be able to opt out of the Whois data retention and verification rules if they can show that they’d be breaking the law otherwise. They won’t have to wait to to get sued first, either.
• Account holder verification. As well as validating the email address or phone number used in the public Whois, registrars will do the same checks on their private account-holder records.
• Proxy and privacy services. If ICANN doesn’t come up with an accreditation program for proxy/privacy services by a certain deadline, the temporary specs in the 2013 RAA will expire.
• Port 43 obligations scrapped. Registrars will no longer have to provide Whois service over port 43 for gTLDs with “thick” registries. They’ll still have to provide it on their web sites though.

The registrars have also agreed to measures that address all 12 of the recommendations proposed by law enforcement agencies a few years ago, which is what kicked off the RAA renegotiation in the first place.
However, as we reported yesterday, law enforcement in the US and Europe are not impressed with the RAA, saying it doesn’t go far enough to verify domain registrants’ identities.
The Governmental Advisory Committee is due to speak to the ICANN board later today, and this is a topic it is likely to bring up. The RAA story may not be over yet.
Generally, the mood from registrars seemed to be mixed but relatively upbeat.
Rob Hall of Pool.com said he’s going to sign the new RAA as soon as possible. He said that the fact that the 2013 RAA is needed in order to sell new gTLD domains is an impetus to sign it.
Elliot Noss of Tucows said he was less eager to sign. He said that the new gTLDs likely to launch in the short term (uncontested ones, in other words) are unlikely to be the most lucrative ones.
Registries and new gTLD applicants, on the other hand, were not so happy with their lot.
Anger over the Registry Agreement
Yesterday’s session in Beijing was notable for a jarring moment in which normally mild-mannered Verisign policy veep Chuck Gomes threw an uncharacteristic wobbler, politely but brutally attacking ICANN for acting in bad faith and treating registries like “second-class citizens”.
He took issue with the fact that the special amendments process in the Registry Agreement was first introduced by ICANN, and then rejected by the community, a few years back.
ICANN can’t describe its eleventh-hour return as an act of “good faith”, he said.
“You’re dealing with organizations on the registry and registrar side that fund 95%, through our registrants, of your budget, and yet we’re treated like second class citizens by throwing something at us that totally reverses a community, multi-stakeholder, bottom-up decision that was made three years ago,” he said.
“Convince me that that was in good faith. I don’t think you can,” he said, receiving a round of applause.
New gTLD applicants such as Verisign have had less time to assemble their collective thoughts and come to a unified negotiating position on the RA, which was thought to be settled until recently.
The amendment provisions were introduced by ICANN in February, and applicants don’t yet have a the same kind of negotiating team the registrars have had for the past 18 months.
What’s more, they’re worried that ICANN is trying to push the changes through without giving them enough time for talks.
Rumors have been circulating in Beijing that the ICANN board is preparing to approve the RAA and RA at a meeting April 20, in time for the first registries to sign up at its April 23 new gTLDs media event.
Under persistent questioning, ICANN vice president of industry engagement Cyrus Namazi said in various different ways that ICANN has no intention to rush-approve an RA to an arbitrarily chosen date.
ICANN says it needs its special amendment rights in order to address unknown future situations in which the voting dynamics of the ICANN policy-making bodies are dominated by special interests that want to block contract changes that would be in the public interest.
Noss from Tucows, an applicant as well as a registrar, said he’s been asking for specific examples of possible reasons the special amendment process would be invoked, but has had no response from ICANN.
He further suggested that if ICANN is so worried about future uncertainties that it feels it needs these rights, then registries and registrars should get the same rights to force amendments.

GAC threat looms over ICANN Beijing

How the Governmental Advisory Committee handles its advice on new gTLD applications seems to be a big worry at the ICANN public meeting in Beijing this week.
During a session yesterday, new gTLD program vice president Christine Willett was peppered with questions about the approval process going forward, many of which related to the GAC.
There’s also a lot of gossiping about which applications the GAC is thinking about delivering the kiss of death to, and what its advice will mean to the overall program timetable.
DI is not attending the Beijing meeting in person, but here’s what I’ve learned from remote participation and talking to attendees:
Confusion over the GAC Advice standard
Judging by interactions during Willett’s session, there may be a little bit of confusion about whether GAC Advice needs to be “consensus” GAC Advice in order to halt a new gTLD application.
I think the confusion is mainly due to the way some people (Willett and myself included) use phrases such as “non-consensus GAC Advice” as shorthand for a particular paragraph of the Applicant Guidebook.
Here’s the way I understand it:
All GAC Advice — including Advice sent on issues completely unrelated to the new gTLD program — is consensus GAC Advice.
If the GAC sends written Advice to the ICANN board, it means the GAC has reached consensus to send that Advice, even if the Advice itself reflects a lack of consensus on the specifics.
Confusion in the community is arising now because the Applicant Guidebook also talks about three types of “GAC Advice on New gTLDs”, the first of which is:

The GAC advises ICANN that it is the consensus of the GAC that a particular application should not proceed. This will create a strong presumption for the ICANN Board that the application should not be approved.

That’s describing a situation where the GAC has reached a consensus that an application should be rejected. It’s going to sound the death knell for several applications, without doubt.
The second type of GAC Advice on New gTLDs in the Guidebook is:

The GAC advises ICANN that there are concerns about a particular application “dot-example.” The ICANN Board is expected to enter into dialogue with the GAC to understand the scope of concerns. The ICANN Board is also expected to provide a rationale for its decision.

The language was written by the GAC, using its consensus model, which is why it’s so badly worded.
What it means is that the GAC could not find consensus to kill off an application — some governments want it killed off, some don’t — but that the GAC as a whole reached consensus to tell ICANN that some governments do want it killed off.
So when people talk about “non-consensus” Advice, we’re referring to this second form of GAC Advice on New gTLDs, where the GAC could reached consensus to alert ICANN about “concerns” but could not reach consensus that the application should be taken outside and shot.
Which applications are going to get Advice?
The GAC stated last week that 20 applications had been put forward for specific review at the Beijing meeting.
From what I’ve been able to piece together from the GAC’s public hints, its Early Warnings, and sources in Beijing, I think I’ve identified many of these applications.
I’m pretty certain that DotConnectAfrica’s application for .africa is going to get killer Advice.
I’m not picking on DCA (disclosure: DCA accused me of being part of a racist conspiracy) but it is the only remaining applicant to comprehensively ignore ICANN’s rules on geographic names.
It’s also well-known that Amazon’s application for .amazon (and translations), and Patagonia Inc’s application for .patagonia, both of which were not captured by ICANN’s rules on geography, are unloved by Latin American governments.
The Montevideo Declaration, signed by government ministers from the continent last week, specifically condemns any new gTLDs related to Amazonia and Patagonia.
It’s difficult to see how the GAC could ignore the strength of this position, but it’s always possible that some members may have been lobbied into submission by applicants, therefore spoiling consensus.
Other geographic strings that ICANN’s rules did not identify as geographic may also face Advice.
It’s known that .persiangulf, for example, is racially/culturally divisive because the same body of water is also known as the Arabian Gulf by Arab states in the region.
The Japanese government’s Early Warning against .date (issued because there are two cities in Japan that, when translated into Latin characters, are called Date) is also believed to have been put forward for formal GAC Advice.
Outside of geographic names, I hear that .basketball and .rugby are also on the GAC’s shortlist.
These are interesting cases because the governments with the beef (Greece and the UK) are not concerned about the strings themselves. Rather, they want to make sure their preferred applicant wins.
Both gTLDs are contested, and each contention set has one applicant backed by the official world authority for the sport concerned.
If the GAC issues Advice on either, it’s putting itself in the position of picking winners and losers, which could make for some frenetic lobbying in future application rounds.
The application for .uno is believed to be under discussion in the GAC because it clashes with the acronym of an intergovernmental organization.
It also seems pretty certain that Demand Media’s applications for .navy, .army and .airforce are going to get Advice in one form or another. The US, I gather, is adamant that these bids should be rejected at all costs.
How GAC Advice affects the timetable
Willett said yesterday that ICANN expects to receive the GAC’s Advice this week, which should come as some relief to applicants given that the timing has always been a bit vague.
But it’s still not clear what form the Advice will take.
Sure, there’s bound to be some bits of Advice that call out specific applications for death-by-board, but there may also be Advice that addresses certain “categories” of application.
If that happens, and the GAC does not explicitly state which applications fall into which category, there’s the potential for mass confusion following the Beijing meeting.
I raised this specter last week, and it cropped up again during Willett’s session in Beijing yesterday.
What I forgot about last week, and what Willett was quizzed about yesterday, is that the Guidebook gives applicants with GAC Advice 21 days to respond to it before the ICANN board acts.
“I’m concerned that whereby the GAC Advice is such that it is all-encompassing and non-exhaustive that therefore all applicants must respond and all applicants are waiting another 21 days,” ARI Registry Services CEO Adrian Kinderis asked. “No applicant can proceed, because they’re all impacted.”
“If that hypothetical situation occurs, I think that’s possible,” Willett responded.
I other words, if the GAC delivers broad advice this week that does not name specific applications, it’s possible that every applicant would have 21 days to tell ICANN’s board why they’re not affected.
That would completely balls up ICANN’s plan to sign its first registry agreements on April 23.

Cops say new gTLDs shouldn’t launch without a Big Brother RAA

Law enforcement agencies are not happy with the proposed 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement, saying it doesn’t go far enough to help them catch online bad guys.
Europol and the FBI told ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee yesterday that people need to have their full identities verified before they’re allowed to register domain names.
They added that new gTLDs shouldn’t be allowed to launch until a tougher RAA is agreed to and signed by registrars.
The draft 2013 RAA would force registrars to validate their customers’ email addresses or phone numbers after selling them a domain, but law enforcement thinks this is not enough.
“We need a bit more in this area,” Troels Oerting, head of Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, told the GAC during a Sunday session. “We need a bit more to be verified in addition to the phone or email.”
“It’s very, very important that we are able to identify perpetrators able, to identify the originators, and it’s not enough that you just put in the email or phone,” he said.
He added that there should also be re-verification procedures and ongoing compliance monitoring from ICANN, and said that only registrars signing the 2013 RAA should be allowed to sell new gTLD domains.
Europol has sent a letter to ICANN (not yet published, it seems) outlining four areas it wants to see the RAA “improved”, Oerting said.
Given that many GAC members, including the US, seem to support this position, it’s yet another threat to ICANN’s new gTLD launch timetable, not to mention privacy and anonymous speech in general.
The law enforcement recommendations are not new, of course. They’ve been in play and GAC-endorsed for many years, but were watered down during ICANN’s RAA talks with registrars.

Verisign’s security angst no reason to delay new gTLDs, says expert

Potential security vulnerabilities recently disclosed by Verisign and PayPal are well in hand and not a reason to delay the launch of new gTLDs, according to the chair of ICANN’s security committee.
Patrick Falstrom, chair of the Security and Stability Advisory Committee, said today that the risk of disastrous clashes between new gTLDs and corporate security certificates has been taken care of.
Talking to the GNSO Council at the ICANN public meeting in Beijing, he gave a definitive “no” when asked directly if the SSAC would advise ICANN to delay the delegation of new gTLDs for security reasons.
Falstrom had given a presentation on “internal name certificates”, one of the security risks raised by Verisign in a paper last week.
These are the same kinds of digital certificates given out by Certificate Authorities for use in SSL transactions on the web, but to companies for their own internal network use instead.
The SSAC, judging by Falstrom’s presentation, had a bit of an ‘oh-shit’ moment late last year when a member raised the possibility of new gTLDs clashing with the domain names on these certificates.
Consider the scenario:
A company has a private namespace on its LAN called .corp, for example, where it stores all of its sensitive corporate data. It uses a digital certificate, issued by a reputable CA, to encrypt this data in transit.
But today we have more than a few applicants for .corp that would use it as a gTLD accessible to the whole internet.
Should .corp get delegated by ICANN — which of course is by no means assured — then there could be the risk of CAs issuing certificates for public domains that clash with private domains.
That might enable, for example, a hacker on a Starbucks wifi network to present his evil laptop as a secured, green-padlocked, corporate server to an unlucky road warrior sitting in the same cafe.
According to Falstrom, at least 157 CAs have issued certificates that clash with applied-for new gTLDs. The actual number is probably much higher.
This risk was outlined in Verisign’s controversial security report to ICANN, which recommended delay to the new gTLD program until security problems were resolved, two weeks ago.
But Falstrom told the GNSO Council today that recent secretive work by the SSAC, along with ICANN security staff and the CA/Browser Forum, a certificate industry authority, has mitigated this risk to the point that delay is not needed.
Falstrom said that after the SSAC realized that there was a potential vulnerability, it got it touch with the CA/Browser Forum to share its concerns. But as it turned out, the Forum was already on the case.
The Forum decided in February, a couple of weeks after an SSAC briefing, that member CAs should stop issuing internal name certificates that clash with new gTLDs within 30 days of ICANN signing a registry contract for that gTLD.
It has also decided to revoke any already-issued internal domain certificate that clashes with a new gTLD within 120 days of contract signing.
This means that the vulnerability window will be much shorter, should the vulnerability start getting exploited in wild.
But only if all CAs conform to the CA/Browser Forum’s guidelines.
Much of this is detailed in a report issued by SSAC last month (pdf). The CA/Browser Forum’s guidance is here (pdf). Falstrom’s PowerPoint is available here (pdf)

Trademark Clearinghouse to get tested out on three existing TLDs

Three already-live TLDs are going to use the Trademark Clearinghouse to handle sunrise periods, possibly before the first new gTLDs launch.
BRS Media is set to use the TMCH, albeit indirectly, in its launch of third-level domains under .radio.am and .radio.fm, which it plans to launch soon as a budget alternative to .am and .fm.
The company has hired TM.Biz, the trademark validation firm affiliated with EnCirca, to handle its sunrise, and TM.biz says it will allow brand owners to leverage Clearinghouse records.
Trademark owners will be able to submit raw trademarks for validation as in previous sunrises, but TM.Biz will also allow them to submit Signed Mark Data (SMD) files, if they have them, instead.
Encrypted SMD files are created by the TMCH after validation, so the trademarks and the strings they represent are pre-validated.
There’ll presumably be some cost benefit of using SMD files, but pricing has not yet been disclosed.
Separately, Employ Media said today that it’s getting ready to enter the final stage of its .jobs liberalization, opening up the gTLD to essentially any string and essentially any registrant.
The company will also use the TMCH for its sunrise period, according to an ICANN press release, though the full details and timing have not yet been announced.
Unusually, .jobs is a gTLD that hasn’t already had a sunrise — its original business model only allowed vetted company-name registrations.
The TMCH is already accepting submissions from trademark owners, but it’s not yet integrated with registries and registrars.