Brands

The Prioritization Draw for new gTLDs is now well underway. Despite a bit of a rough start with the live stream of the Draw, ICANN has been steadily plugging away through the 1,766 applications that opted to participate. With 1,930 applications submitted, this figure represents 92 percent of applications – meaning less than 200 applications chose to not participate in the Draw.

ICANN drew 108 IDN gTLD applications first before moving on to the non-IDN gTLD strings. Of the first 100 non-IDN gTLDs drawn, 47 were for branded terms or generic terms submitted by a major brand. Of the remaining 53, five were for geographic terms (.RUHR, .KOELN, .HELSINKI, .TOKYO and .PARIS), and the final 48 were for generic terms.

Below are the lists of the first 25 branded and first 25 generic-term gTLDs with their applicants in parentheses. Generic terms that were applied for by brands are bolded.

Branded Terms:

1. .DNP (Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd.)
2. .DELMONTE (Del Monte International GmbH)
3. .BLANCO (BLANCO GmbH + Co KG)
4. .GLE (Charleston Road Registry Inc.)
5. .SCHWARZGROUP (Schwarz Domains und Services GmbH & Co. KG)
6. .SAMSCLUB (Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.)
7. .MCKINSEY (McKinsey Holdings, Inc.)
8. .ARTE (Association Relative à la Télévision Européenne G.E.I.E.)
9. .TRANSFORMERS (Hasbro International, Inc.)
10. .KERRYHOTELS (Kerry Trading Co. Limited)
11. .REDUMBRELLA (Travelers TLD, LLC)
12. .VIVA (Saudi Telecom Company)
13. .AGHAKHAN (Fondation Aga Khan (Aga Khan Foundation))
14. .WTC (World Trade Centers Association, Inc.)
15. .STC (Saudi Telecom Company)
16. .MOBILY (GreenTech Consultancy Company W.L.L.)
17. .LIPSY (Lipsy Ltd) B
18. .IMAMAT (Fondation Aga Khan (Aga Khan Foundation))
19. .FIAT (Fiat S.p.A.)
20. .OTSUKA (Otsuka Holdings Co., Ltd.)
21. .LASALLE (Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated)
22. .DIGIKEY (Digi-Key Corporation)
23. .TEMASEK (Temasek Holdings (Private) Limtied)
24. .CYOU (Beijing Gamease Age Digital Technology Co., Ltd.)
25. .GLADE (Johnson Shareholdings, Inc.)

Generic Terms:

1. .PLAY (Amazon EU S.à r.l.)
2. .DOG (Top Level Domain Holdings Limited)
3. .LAT (ECOM-LAC Federaciòn de Latinoamèrica y el Caribe para Internet y el Comercio Electrònico)
4. .PARTY (Oriental Trading Company, Inc.)
5. .ENERGY (Binky Birch, LLC)
6. .FOOD (Lifestyle Domain Holdings, Inc.)
7. .MORMON (IRI Domain Management, LLC)
8. .CAREER (dotCareer LLC)
9. .CAMERA (Atomic Maple, LLC)
10. .FISHING (United TLD Holdco Ltd.)
11. .BUY (Amazon EU S.à r.l.)
12. .WEDDING (Wedding TLD LLC)
13. .MENU (Wedding TLD2, LLC)
14. .CITY (Snow Sky, LLC)
15. .ACTIVE (The Active Network, Inc)
16. .FISHING (Top Level Domain Holdings Limited)
17. .CHURCH (Holly Fields, LLC)
18. .TECH (Uniregistry, Corp.)
19. .BUY (PVT Registry, LLC)
20. .LIFESTYLE (Lifestyle Domain Holdings, Inc.)
21. .INVESTMENTS (Holly Glen, LLC)
22. .IDN (Nameshop)
23. .JOY (Amazon EU S.à r.l.)
24. .FURNITURE (Uniregistry, Corp.)
25. .WANG (Zodiac Leo Limited)

We’ll be following up tomorrow with more details.

Early this morning, at 7:30 AM Prague time, a group of new gTLD applicants and members of the gTLD Registries Stakeholder Group (RySG) gathered in a meeting room to adopt the charter for a new group, the New TLD Applicant Group, or NTAG. The group was established under the umbrella of the RySG; its charter was based off the RySG charter and the group will utilize RySG resources like a mailing list and an administrator who can set up conference calls. (more...)

One week after ICANN revealed 1,930 applications for new gTLDs, the Internet community continues to debate the validity of many parts of the application process. In particular, a great deal of chatter kicked up over the weekend about whether or not a brand’s ownership of a generic-term gTLD is anti-competitive. This debate has been fueled largely by corporate applications for generic words as gTLDs, like Amazon’s application for .MOVIE (in fact, Google and Amazon have been taking most of the flak, given their large volume of applications). (more...)

Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised at this point. But this morning, when we woke up and checked our email to find there had been yet another technical glitch with ICANN, we couldn’t help but groan.

Let’s go back to the New gTLD Applicant Guidebook. In early versions, ICANN requires that the primary and secondary contact for each application provide their home addresses. In the version published in January, just before the TLD Application System (TAS) opened, there was an update that assured applicants that these street addresses would not be made public. (more...)

Because our business is working with brand owners, we launched this blog to address some of the issues that brand owners face and concerns they have when it comes to new gTLDs. As a result, we devote a good deal of time to discussing .BRAND gTLDs. By .BRAND, we mean the domain name extensions that companies apply for to correspond with their brand names, whether it be their core business name, like .TOYOTA for Toyota, or a branded product or service name, like .CAMRY. (more...)

By now, regardless of how we may feel about new gTLDs, we all know who was the driving force behind the New gTLD Program – ICANN, the California-based non-profit that is in charge of coordinating the Internet’s domain name system.

Well, actually that’s not quite true. It turns out that everyone knows ICANN was the driving force behind new gTLDs except…ICANN. (more...)

The driving mission behind the gTLD Strategy blog is to provide brand owners and brand representatives with objective information about new gTLDs in order to provide them with completely unbiased advice on how to develop strategies around new gTLDs. We understand that some brands will, in fact, extract the most benefit from pursuing their own branded, category term or aspirational gTLDs. But we also understand that for some brands, applying for a new gTLD will not be worth the investment of time and money required.

So you can understand our frustration when we read things like Afilias Senior VP and CMO Roland LaPlante’s new piece for Circle ID. Afilias, by the way, is the company that launched the .INFO gTLD registry back in 2001, and is now offering gTLD services to brand owners and other applicants. (more...)

One of the biggest questions currently on people’s minds is, so just who is going to apply for a new gTLD? In other words, what is the Internet going to look like two years from now? Many organizations are keeping their plans close to the vest in an attempt to gain a certain competitive advantage over their rivals. Others have been open with their plans from the start, hoping to start building buzz around and brand recognition of their new gTLDs. (more...)

Right now, approximately five months before ICANN opens the new gTLD application period, many brands are still grappling over the question of whether or not to apply for their core brands as gTLDs, in the way Canon has indicated it will apply for .CANON.  For certain brands, this will not be possible or advisable for a number of reasons. Take Edible Arrangements for example. ICANN will not permit two-character gTLD extensions, so abbreviating “Edible Arrangements” to .EA is out of the question. But the idea of applying for .EDIBLEARRANGEMENTS as a gTLD, and advertising domains like Birthdays.EdibleArrangements, doesn’t seem like an attractive option. So what’s a company in this position to do? (more...)