ICANN

Today kicks off the sale of tickets for ICANN’s Prioritization Draw in Los Angeles, California. The sale will continue until the morning of Monday, December 17. The Draw will take place later that day.

We've explained the Prioritization Draw previously here on the blog, but for a refresher, you can check out the video below, where FairWinds’ consulting associate Molly Burke discusses the details of the Draw.

This video is one of a series of videos FairWinds has made about various aspects of the New gTLD Program and new gTLD strategies for brand owners. We will be releasing more videos over the coming weeks, but for now, visit our YouTube channel to see the first few.

So why are we bringing up the Prioritization Draw again? There seems to be some confusion out there about the comparative advantages and disadvantages of actually participating in the Draw. Considering that applicants have to get to Los Angeles to buy their tickets and participate in the Draw in person, or otherwise find a proxy to stand in for them, and pay $100 a pop for each ticket, the idea of simply skipping the whole thing may seem pretty appealing to applicants who aren’t in a big rush to launch their new gTLDs.

But taking the back seat like this, even if you would rather hold off on launching your new gTLD for a time, is not the best move. If there’s one thing that is certain about new gTLDs, it’s that nothing is certain – we cannot know right now how quickly new gTLDs and the marketplace around them will take off (although from FairWinds’ recent research, we know that it may be relatively quickly). Opting out of the Draw basically means relinquishing control over when you can proceed with many aspects of the gTLD evaluation and launch process. Conversely, if you do participate in the Draw but want to slow down these processes, there are multiple points at which you can choose to delay or extend the amount of time to complete certain tasks, like negotiating the Registry Agreement.

It seems ironic, but for those applicants who want to wait, it’s actually more advisable to participate in the Draw. That way, they get to wait on their terms, rather than ICANN’s.

If you’re anywhere near the East Coast of the U.S. like we are at FairWinds, then you’re likely in the throes of Hurricane Sandy right now. We closed our Washington, DC office and had our employees work from home today – but that didn’t stop us from thinking about new gTLDs. (more...)

You know that first day at the end of summer, before the temperature drops and the foliage changes, when there’s just something in the air, something different that tells you autumn is just around the corner?

ICANN’s 45th Public Meeting here in Toronto, Canada, has a similar feeling to it – that something is just not quite the same as it was before. For example, senior government officials conducted a high-level meeting in conjunction with an ICANN public meeting for the first time ever today. ICANN’s new President and CEO, Fadi Chehadé, has appointed an array of new staff members and indicated during his remarks at this morning’s welcome ceremony that ICANN is on the precipice of an organizational shift. And hundreds of attendees here in Toronto are participating in an ICANN meeting for the first time. (more...)

The last time we wrote about new gTLD application batching (or metering or sequencing) here on the gTLD Strategy blog was over a month ago, when we discussed some of the comments applicants had submitted to ICANN on the matter. Now, according to an announcement made in the early hours of the morning, ICANN is proposing a new plan for prioritizing applications through the steps leading up to launch. And much to everyone’s surprise, it involves a lottery – and a surprisingly old school lottery, at that. (more...)

Some readers may remember hearing about a court ruling from last month that made some waves in the domain name space. The Central District of California District Court ruled that the lawsuit filed by Manwin Licensing, the owner of YouPorn.com against ICM Registry, the operator of the .XXX gTLD, could proceed, indicating that ICANN is subject to U.S. antitrust laws. Many assumed that this ruling would mean that new generic-term gTLDs would be subject to antitrust laws, and therefore would be open to antitrust lawsuits. FairWinds’ Counsel Steve Levy weighs in on this topic in a special post below. (more...)

On Thursday, ICANN will host another one of its New gTLD Program Applicant Update webinars to update applicants on topics “of interest” to them. One of those topics, of course, is the ongoing progress toward adopting a solution to resolve the issue of application batching/metering/sequencing once and for all.

Readers will remember from our earlier post, “Weighing in on Batching,” that FairWinds submitted a proposed solution during ICANN’s recently closed public comment window that followed the accounting principle, First In, First Out, or FIFO. Essentially, our solution relies on natural speed bumps and roadblocks in the new gTLD application evaluation process and puts more control in the hands of new gTLD applicants, rather than in ICANN to establish subjective delays. You can read more about our proposed solution in the post. (more...)

If you read our last gTLD Strategy post, you’re probably sick of hearing about the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH) by now. But today is an important day in the ongoing development and implementation of this aspect of the New gTLD Program.

Today and tomorrow, ICANN is hosting a technical summit at the Deloitte offices in Brussels (Deloitte and IBM were selected to develop the TMCH), where representatives from registries and registrars will have the chance to weigh in on many of the technical aspects of the TMCH. This meeting was the result of widespread demand expressed by these two groups during the ICANN Public Meeting in Prague in June. Essentially, their argument boiled down to, “We’re the ones who need to use the TMCH, so we should get a say in how it works.” (more...)

In a recent post, we talked about silver bullets – specifically, the belief that new gTLDs would be a magic cure to all search engine optimization quandaries. But after talking with multiple brand owners across a variety of industries, we’ve realized that there is another widely held misconception about a cure-all solution circulating around the business world. This time, it’s about the new gTLD Trademark Clearinghouse, or TMCH for short.

Many brand owners believe that if they register their trademarks in the TMCH, then ICANN will block the registration of all domain names containing those trademarks across all new gTLDs.

Oh, if life were that simple. (more...)

In an announcement published over the weekend, ICANN issued a request for community input on “requirements for an evaluation and delegation process” for new gTLDs. Essentially, questions raised during the Public Meeting in Prague about the order in which new gTLD applications would be handled – whether at the evaluation, release, or delegation phases – are still without answers, so now ICANN is once again turning to the community for advice. (more...)