New gTLD Program Committe Denies 3 Reconsideration Request But Punts On … - The  New gTLD Program Committee (NPGC) of ICANN denied several requests for reconsideration in its latest meeting of which the minutes published last night, while punting on reconsideration requests Amazon on .Amazon. The NGPC denied the requests for reconsideration of Hotel Top-Level-Domain S.a.r.l’s (“dotHotel”) of the 8 August 2013 Expert Determination from a dispute resolution panel established by the International Centre for Dispute Resolution (ICDR) dismissing dotHotel’s objection ... read more ...

.Guru and .Singles among first new domain names - The first English generic Top Level Domain names (gTLD) have been released with '.singles' one of the lucky nine. New domain names are set to trickle out slowly over time with the nine new English gTLDs following the release of Arabic, Chinese and Cyrillic domains in October. The nine new English domain names are: .guru, .ventures, .camera, .clothing, .lighting, .singles, .voyage, .holdings and .equipment. The first Australian ‘.brand’ domain names – for example ‘.monash’ or ‘.nab’ ... read more ...

New gTLD Program Committee Accepts GAC Advice On Cat 1 & 2 Beijing … - In a letter sent to Heather Dryden
, Chair, Governmental Advisory Committee by the New gTLD Program Committee (NGPC) ,  they are intending to accept the GAC’s Beijing Communiqué advice concerning Category 1 and Category 2 Safeguards. The result of the NPGC action is that some new gTLD’s in the same vertical will be open to anyone who wants to register a domain name, while others will fall into the highly restricted category and can only be registered by those that are licensed or meet ... read more ...

.Sport Fallout: 12 Applicants Call On ICANN To Add An Appeals Proceess For … - The fallout from the .Sport objection continues as 12 new gTLD applicants sent a letter to ICANN today signed  “expressing our ever-growing concerns relating to the Community Objection process”. A ICC panel upheld the objection of SportAccord to Famous Four application for .Sport finding that SportAccord represented the community of “Sports” The letter was signed by Radix Registry and co-signed by 11 new gTLD applicants, United TLD Holdco Ltd.,  DotClub Domains, LLC, Top Level Design, ... read more ...

Famous Four Media Partners with Key-Systems to Promote its Portfolio of new … - RealWire2013-11-05 November 2013 - Famous Four Media (FFM) and Key-Systems today announced a strategic partnership to jointly develop, market and sell the FFM generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) portfolio. Famous Four Media is managing some of the most relevant suffixes in the domain industry, such as .accountant, .bid, .date or .download; 12 of the 57 applied for strings are uncontested.The first uncontested new gTLD FFM launches will be .BID. The Sunrise for .bid is expected to start in early 2014. ... read more ...

gTLDs – first batch soon to be launched - Further to our previous updates on this matter, following years of preparatory work, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced on 23 October 2013 that the first new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) from its New gTLD Program are to be introduced in the next few weeks. Once the final stage of the gTLD implementation process, the Sunrise period, has been completed, the first batch of gTLD domain names will be available to Internet users. By way of reminder, the Sunrise ... read more ...

Yet Another Embarrassing IDN Gaff from ICANN - Hot on the heels of other ICANN Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) Top-Level Domain (TLD) launch errors1, we now have another example of ICANN's failure to comprehend the differences between IDN and ASCII names, this time to the detriment of potential IDN registrants and the new IDN generic TLD (gTLD) Registries. This gaff really makes you wonder whether the SSAC and Multilinguism departments at ICANN have ever met. I'm sure you are by now aware of the late-to-the-party security concerns ... read more ...

101 Domain Sending gTLD Updates - Last week, I wrote about Calzone, a new calendar website for the domain industry. The primary objective of the calendar is to keep people informed of important dates for the new gTLDs, such as sunrise periods, landrush periods, general availability, auctions…etc. 101 Domain is offering customers somewhat of a more personal email newsletter to keep them abreast of new gTLD dates and updates. The newsletter is called New gTLD Update, and it is sent to customers and others who sign up to receive ... read more ...

First New TLD Quietly Enters Sunrise Period - The first Sunrise Period for trademark owners under ICANN's new gTLD program has begun. The gTLD is the Arabic IDN 'شبكة, or "dot-Shabaka". The term roughly means "web" in Arabic and eligibility for registrations is unrestricted. The Dot-Shabaka Registry has made it clear for months that they wanted to be the first TLD to launch this year. This launch represents an important milestone for ICANN's new gTLD program. Congratulations are in order for ICANN, ARI Registry (the back-end provider) ... read more ...

ICANN delegates new generic top-level domains - The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) on October 23, 2013 announced the "Dawn of a New Internet Era" with the first round of rollouts and delegation for the new generic top-level domains (gTLDs). This means the new gTLDs were added into the Root Zone Database, which is the central authoritative database for the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS).   What does this mean for the Internet? The current list of 22 available gTLDs (e.g., .com, .biz, ... read more ...

Fantastic .voyage: the launch of first 9 new gTLDs - The first nine new generic top-level domain name spaces (gTLDs) in English1 are expected to go live on or around October 29, 2013.  These first nine domain spaces to join existing gTLDs like .com and .net are: .camera, .clothing, .equipment, .guru, .holdings, .lighting, .singles, .ventures and .voyage.  Up to a thousand more new gTLDs are expected to launch in the following months. One of the most thorough lists of estimated launch dates is maintained here, and a searchable list of all gTLD applications ... read more ...

Famous Four On .Sport Decision “We Will Rigorously Pursue All Legal Avenues … - Famous Four Media issued a statement on the ICC decision granting an objection to Famous Four Applications for .Sport, finding that the other applicant for the gTLD. Sport, SportAccord represented the community of Sports, saying that they intend to “rigorously pursue  all available legal avenues available to it to have the decision independently reviewed by ICANN and/or others as the case may be, and reversed.” We found the decision pretty shocking ourselves; to find the one group which ... read more ...

WOW: ICC Upholds Community Objection Of SportsAccord To Famous Four’s … - The ICC has Upheld the Community Objection of SportAccord against the application of Famous Four for the new gTLD .Sport SportAccord is also an applicant for the new gTLD .Sport, actually the only other applicant for .Sport so what this ruling means if it stands, is that Famous Four’s application for .Sport will be rejected and SportAccord will wind up with the new gTLD .Sport. The ICC panel found that SportAccord represented the community of Sports. There is also a new gTLD application .Sports ... read more ...

Trademark owners – protect yourselves NOW as the new gTLDs are finally … - The first wave of the new Generic Top Level Domain Names (the “new gTLDs”) were just approved to go live a few days ago, and cybersquatters and speculators may already be pre-registering your brand as one of these new domain names. The remaining 900 or so expected new gTLDs, such as .shop and .online, will go live on a rolling basis with little advance warning. Accordingly, it is time for trademark owners to review their domain name enforcement strategies and scale them appropriately to meet ... read more ...

Wrap Up From OTA’s New gTLD Domain Collisions Workshop: Collision Issue Is … - The Online Trust Alliance‘s (OTA) held a new gTLD Domain Collisions Workshop yesterday in Herndon, VA over what “many stakeholders believe there are significant risks of “domain collisions” occurring with the introduction of the new gTLD’s The workshop ran well over 7 hours and the overriding theme is that the domain collision issue is a lot like Y2K. Domain collisions are the result of a long-standing practice of network administrators setting up intranets (internal networks) using ... read more ...

As new gTLDs near launch, what’s happening and how can you protect yourself? - 30 October 2013 By Bobby Ghajar and Robert B BurlingameWhile much of the world is finally getting a handle on the .com, .net and .org domains, we are on the brink of an explosion of hundreds of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs). In fact, if things go as planned, we will soon grow from the 22 current gTLDs to nearly 2,000 gTLDs.Although exciting and intriguing, particularly ... read more ...