RBC: Demand Media New gTLD Initiative Could Be Worth More Than Its … - RBC issued an Equity Research Report  today on Demand Media, Inc., the day after Demand Media, Inc, reported its second quarter earnings. Demand Media announced during the earnings report and the earnings call that followed that Google’s Search algorithm continues to impact Demand’s owned and operated site traffic negatively and to a greater extent than captured in estimates. Shares of Demand are down over 5% in early trading today at $6.21 as time of publication although they hit as low ... read more ...

Demand Media Reports Second Quarter 2013 Results – SYS - <![CDATA[ ]]> Demand Media, Inc. (NYSE:DMD), a leading digital media and domain services company, today reported financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2013. “Demand Media accelerated its content commerce strategy in Q2 with the acquisition of e-commerce marketplace Society6, complementing our content platform as well as our other commerce initiatives like Creativebug, eHow Now ... read more ...

Verisign: We Will Delegate New gTLD’s To The Root If The NTIA Tells Us To - Some bloggers here and here, have raised the alarm that Verisign may not Delegate new gTLD’s based on a letter Verisign send to the U.S. National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA) back in March. I reached out to Verisign to get an updated comment and position of Verisign on the issue and asked if Verisign would delegate 20 new gTLD strings per week as is ICANN’s current plan starting sometime late this year and certainly for 2014 under the new gTLD program. A Verisign ... read more ...

ICANN Opens Comment Period On Rights Protection Mechanism (RPM … - ICANN has opened the comment period for  “Rights Protection Mechanism (RPM) Requirements” The operational requirements for implementation of the Sunrise and Trademark Claims processes in new gTLDs, and a set of community-proposed revisions, are being posted for comment to give an opportunity for the community to review and provide feedback on these requirements. This revised version of the RPM Requirements reflects updates based on community consultations, and a set of proposals ... read more ...

Verisign Publishes “New gTLD Security, Stability, Resiliency Update: Exploratory … - Consider what might happen if overnight, some networked systems inside a healthcare provider in Japan began to suffer undiagnosed system failures. Would it be a concern if some installations of banking software in the islands of the Caribbean became non-responsive?  Perhaps pause would be warranted when embarking on a visit to a developing nation, and discovering that the hotels in the region have suffered outages of their reservation systems. What if a rash of major enterprises around the world ... read more ...

Hungary: no need to cancel a defendant’s trade mark to commence infringement … - With decisions of July 30 and July 31, 2013 in case LRO2013-0068 and LRO2013-0069, the Panel of the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center rejected the Legal Rights Objection filed against the applied-for gTLD strings .merck and .emerck by Merck KGaA (Germany) on the basis that these do not infringe the trade mark rights of complainant Merck Co, Inc. (US). In this note both cases, which are virtually identical as to facts and motivation, will be discussed together. Merck KGaA and Merck Co., Inc. ... read more ...

Donuts Names New CFO - Donuts Inc., the domain name registration firm targeting the new global top level domain (gTLD) market which has major operations in Los Angeles, has appointed a new CFO, the company said Tuesday. The firm announced that it has named Jeff deCillia as its Chief Financial Officer, located in the company's Bellevue, Washington office. Kevin Wilson, the company's former CFO, has become VP of Finance. deCillia was most recently CFO of INRIX, and also served as CFO of PivotLink, Captaris (acquired by ... read more ...

Boston Globe Is Sold Including Boston.com & New gTLD .Boston For 70 Million … - Boston Red Sox principal owner John Henry is going to buy  The Boston Globe.  The Boston Globe also owns and operates Boston.com and is the sole applicant for the new gTLD .Boston for $70 million in cash. The seller is the Times Co. which operates the New York Times. The Times Co. is taking a huge beating on the transaction as it purchased the Globe for $1.1 billion it paid for the paper in 1993. The Company as I mentioned is also the owner (although not being reported in the mainstream press) ... read more ...

ICM’s .Porn gTLD Passes ICANN’s Initial Evaluation - MARINA DEL REY, Calif. — ICM Registry received approval from ICANN this morning to move forward with plans to create a .porn generic top-level domain. ICANN's decision to grant initial approval is a strategic victory for the .xxx operator, which last month also received the green light on another gTLD, .adult. Stuart Lawley, CEO of ICM Registry, told XBIZ that the firm plans on locking up another gTLD, .sex, before the end of the month.  "In our opinion and having studied the healthy rankings ... read more ...

OBJECTIONS AGAINST gTLD STRINGS .MERCK AND .EMERCK FAIL - With decisions of July 30 and July 31, 2013 in case LRO2013-0068 and LRO2013-0069, the Panel of the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center rejected the Legal Rights Objection filed against the applied-for gTLD strings .merck and .emerck by Merck KGaA (Germany) on the basis that these do not infringe the trade mark rights of complainant Merck Co, Inc. (US). In this note both cases, which are virtually identical as to facts and motivation, will be discussed together. Merck KGaA and Merck Co., Inc. ... read more ...

Merck & Co Legal Rights Objections Dismissed By WIPO - In two more WIPO decision out today Merck Co., Inc. objection to the applications of Merck KGaA to .Merck and .eMerck were thrown out. Those filing Legal Rights Objections have now lost all 27 decisions that have been issued by WIPO However these case varied from many of the previous cases which dealt with front running trademark application. In these case the objector is the global drug company Merck one of the largest drug companies in the world. Here is the relevant parts of the decision: Objector ... read more ...

eNom & DreamHost Announce Hosting and Domain Partnership - eNom to manage domain registration; provide resellers with DreamHost services KIRKLAND, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 31, 2013-- eNom, Inc., the world's largest ICANN accredited wholesale registrar and DreamHost, a global leader in web hosting and cloud storage and computing services, today announced a strategic partnership between the two companies. As part of the agreement, DreamHost will utilize the eNom reseller platform to manage its existing domain name business and new gTLDs as they ... read more ...

NXDOMAINS, SSAC’s SAC045, and New gTLDs (Part 4 of 5) - In 2010, ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) published SAC045 [PDF], a report calling attention to particular problems that may arise should a new gTLD applicant use a string that has been seen with measureable (and meaningful) frequency in queries for resolution by the root system. The queries to which they referred involved invalid Top-Level Domain (TLD) queries (i.e., non-delegated strings) at the root level of the domain name system (DNS), queries which elicit responses ... read more ...

.PW Becomes First TLD To Adopt Uniform Rapid Suspension - The .pw Registry just announced it is the first TLD to adopt ICANN’s latest rights protection mechanism, the Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS). The URS is in the Applicant Gudebook for new gTLD’s. “The URS seeks to provide trademark holders with faster protection against infringement than the existing Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). “ “While the UDRP, a more expensive and long process, awards ownership of a domain to the winner of a dispute, the URS ensures faster ... read more ...

What’s Happening With Aug. 13 Applicant Auction to Resolve gTLD Contention? - The second Applicant Auction is coming up on August 13, and after a great round of workshops at the ICANN Conference in Durban, we've started to finalize all of the details. Any applicants who haven't indicated their intention to participate can still do so! We'll be opening the sign-up system within the next week, and we're expecting a large number of participants! After the success of our first auction in June, we have made some important changes to the August auction. First, we're proud ... read more ...

Tucows Follows Uniregistry & Withdraws Two gTLD Applications .Media … - Three more new gTLD applications were withdrawn with ICANN today and two are very interesting. Tucows, Inc. withdrew two of  its new gTLD applications one for .Media, just one week after another applicant Uniregistry dropped their application for .Media. and .Marketing just a little over a month after Uniregistry dropped their application for .Marketing. Tucows application for .Media had prioritization number of 407 and .Marketing had a prioritization number of 793 and both had passed ICANN ... read more ...

New internet addresses - WHO has the rights to the name “Amazon”? The e-commerce giant of the same name or the countries through which the world’s second longest river flows? The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which oversees the internet’s address system, will have to answer this tricky question: the company wants to register internet addresses ending in .amazon, but several countries in South America, including Brazil and Peru, object. And they have the support of the Government ... read more ...

ICANN Scores dotAfrica Domain High in Initial Evaluation -  dotAfrica Steering Committee Chair Mohammed El Bashir  Amaka Eze Africa is firmly on its way to having its own dotAfrica generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) after the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names Numbers (ICANN), the Internet governing body ruled that the ZA Central Registry (ZACR) bid for dotAfrica has passed "Initial Evaluation". The decision was communicated officially last Monday. "Based on the review of your application (it) has passed Initial Evaluation. The application ... read more ...

Why Latin American Countries Scored a Major Victory Over Internet Domain … - Chile and Argentina have scored a major victory in the battle over the use of geographic terms such as generic top level domain names (gTLD), a new form of internet addresses that include endings such as .xxx, .app, .book, .search, and .amazon. The two South American nations filed complaints against Patagonia Inc., a California-based clothing company, when it put in an application request for ... read more ...

ICANN Legal Rights Objections: What’s Past Is Prologue - As of today, panelists at the World Intellectual Property Organization's Arbitration and Mediation Center have decided 12 trademark-based legal rights objections to a proposed top-level domain under the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers' new gTLD initiative. They rejected every one, almost categorically so.With 53 legal rights objections remaining to be decided, the only surprise the future might hold is the faint prospect that a WIPO panelist might actually rule in favor of a trademark ... read more ...

Domainia Inc Announces the Launch of Appdomainia.com, a Pre-registration … - ... read more ...