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New gTLD registries get $6 million refund

Kevin Murphy, May 16, 2018, Domain Registries

ICANN has offered new gTLD registries refunds totaling over $6 million after allegedly double-charging them for access to the Trademark Clearinghouse.
At the weekend, its board of directors resolved:

to provide a refund of $5,000, as soon as practicable, to the contracted registries or registry operators (including those that have terminated their contracts or whose TLD delegation has been revoked) that have paid to ICANN the one-time RPM access fee

The five grand fee was levied on each new gTLD as a way of funding the TMCH, which handles trademark validation for sunrise periods and other rights protection mechanisms.
But registries pointed out last October that this kind of thing was precisely what their original $185,000 applications fees were meant to cover.
The Registries Stakeholder Group said back then:

All other systems and programs related to the New gTLD Program were funded from application fees. The TMCH should have been no different and there was no reason to “double-charge” registries for this one piece of the program.

Eight months later, ICANN seems to have reluctantly agreed.
It appears that the refunds — which given over 1,200 TLDs would come to over $6 million in total — will be paid from the roughly $80 million in leftover application fees, rather than ICANN’s tightening operational budget.
While $5,000 isn’t life-changing money, it adds up to a substantial chunk of change for large portfolio registries such as Donuts, which stands to receive roughly $1.5 million.

New gTLD applicant asks for money back

Kevin Murphy, May 23, 2012, Domain Registries

At least one new generic top-level domain applicant has requested a full $185,000 refund of its application fee, according to ICANN.
This exchange is from last night’s Twitter chat with ICANN executives:


It’s interesting that the answer was qualified with “since full refund offer”, suggesting there may have been more requests for refunds prior to ICANN’s decision to up the maximum refund from $180,000 to $185,000.
It’s not known which applicant asked for the refund or why.