Contention Sets

The clock is winding down to the close of ICANN’s period to file objections against new gTLD applications. With the deadline of tomorrow, March 13 at 8:00 pm EDT looming, only one objection has been publicly posted on ICANN’s website. But will we see the floodgates open in the eleventh hour?

If the Public Comment period on new gTLD applications, which ran from July 13 through September 26, 2012, is any indication, then the answer to that question is yes. Literally thousands of comments were submitted on the last day (technically, the comment period is still open, but only comments submitted by September 26 were guaranteed to be sent to application evaluators). So that is one hint that we may be seeing more objections pop up in the next day.

Another question on many people’s minds is whether we’ll see a run of String Similarity Objections filed in response to the Contention Set results published in late February. Only eight gTLD applications that were not exact matches ended up in contention. Those eight were .HOTELS vs. .HOTEIS, .UNICOM vs. .UNICORN, and four IDN strings across two different contention sets. Many expected that applications for terms that were very similar in meaning, such as .CAREER and .CAREERS, would also end up in contention, but they did not. So will this mean that some applicants will file String Similarity Objections in order to force applicants for similar terms into a Contention Set, with the goal of taking what could be a competing string out of the running?

Watching this play out over the next day should be pretty exciting. We’ll be checking back on ICANN’s Objections page regularly to see if new objections are posted, and ICANN has announced that it will publish the complete list of objections sometime in April. In the meantime, to refresh your memory about the different types of possible gTLD application objections, check out FairWinds’ Jennifer Goldberg explaining all four types of objections in the video here:

During today’s new gTLD applicant update webinar, ICANN made some important announcements regarding the timing of upcoming milestones in the new gTLD application evaluation process. Specifically, ICANN stated that Contention Sets would be announced on March 1. This is nearly two months after the most recent date ICANN had put forth for the publication of Contention Sets, which was mid-January. Other milestones seem to be proceeding on schedule, though: Clarifying Questions for non-geographic strings will be issued beginning this Tuesday, January 15, at a rate of 100 per week, in the order of application's Prioritization Draw numbers. The Trademark Clearinghouse will begin accepting trademark registrations in February, and the application evaluation panels are on track to release Initial Evaluation results beginning in late March, as planned. (more...)

UPDATE: ICANN has just posted the presentation for today’s webinar. In those slides, ICANN states that the Prioritization Drawing will take place on December 17 at the Hilton LAX is Los Angeles, CA. The sale of the tickets required for the Drawing will take place from December 12 through 16 and on the morning of December 17, also at the Hilton LAX. ICANN is encouraging applicants to purchase their tickets before the drawing date.

There is also a slight change to the timing for Clarifying Questions (CQs). CQs about geographic-term gTLDs will be issued on November 26 as planned, but all other CQs will be issued in January. Applicants will have four weeks to respond, instead of two as ICANN had previously stated.

(more...)