dotJoburg domain moves ahead - The .joburg domain name will give companies an opportunity to market a distinct association with the city. The institution for local domain names continues to gain momentum, as the initial evaluation stage of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers’ (ICANN’s) new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) project has been completed. According to the ZA Domain Name Authority (ZADNA), the dotJoburg (.joburg) application has been submitted by the ZA Central Registry (ZACR). This ... read more ...

ICANN to shift around top-level execs - ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is shifting around some key executives, the organization said in a blog posted Thursday. Starting July 1, Akram Atallah, currently chief operating officer, will transition to a new role as president of the Generic Domains Division. Focusing on generic domain operations, the new division is considered necessary as ICANN's new gTLD (generic top-level domain) program will take on much greater responsibility moving forward, according ... read more ...

The scores on the TMCH doors: level of trademark owner engagement revealed - Deloitte has revealed the number of trademark owners and agents currently registered with the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH). The news comes in the week that ICANN published the first responses to the recent GAC advice on the gTLD programme and L'Oréal became the latest company to withdraw a ‘.brand’ application. Deloitte reports that there are 636 trademark holders and 119 agents registered with the TMCH. The figure was revealed in a new gTLD update webinar, presented this week by ... read more ...

The new gTLDs and the Trademark Clearinghouse: four tips for brand owners - 7 June 2013 The imminent launch of more than 1,400 new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) poses a major challenge to brand owners seeking to enforce and maintain control over the way their key trademarks appear in domain names. The domain ender ‘.com’ is the most widely used of the current gTLDs, but ‘.net’, ‘.org’ and ‘.edu’ gTLDs are also prevalent. All ... read more ...

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

1st Private Auction May Be Complete As Donuts Withdraws Its 1st New gTLD … - Donuts has withdrawn its 1st new gTLD of the 307 applications it filed with ICANN. This certainly could be the result of a private auction which are underway this week. There is only one other applicant for the new gTLD .Vote and that company application, under the name of Monolith Registry LLC was filed by Afilias which operates the .info TLD. Donuts application which is now withdrawn is under the corporate name Double Falls, LLC which had a prioritization number of 663. Now that Donuts application ... read more ...

ICANN New gTLD Applications To Start In October - During a Webinar today, ICANN announced it is intending to hold the first round of the ICANN Last Resort auction starting in October for those Contention sets which DO NOT include community applications. Auctions are also not expected for strings that have outstanding objections in the first group of strings. Under the ICANN Guidebook, Last resort auctions are to be held in groups at set times. So the October auctions will be the first set not the only or the last set. Much more information ... read more ...

Why Are Brands Abandoning gTLD Applications? - A number of brands have recently fallen from the list of visionary companies applying for gTLDs. Hasbro’s Transformers, Hilton, GM’s suite of gTLDs and Heinz have all decided to pull their gTLD applications, opting out of participating in the first paradigm shift of the Internet. Why? There two likely reasons -- companies are having difficulty responding to ICANN’s clarifying questions that were designed more for an open registry than for brands, or they are balking at the costs associated ... read more ...

Private New gTLD Auctions Are Underway - According to ApplicantAuction.com the first private auction for new gTLD strings are underway. Although other than .Club which publicly announced it would be participating in the auction which started today, there hasn’t been any public announcement on  how many other auctions are going on or what the string are. Both Donuts and Demand Media, Inc. (DMD) announced it was entering the private auction for a number of new gTLD strings they applied for but there has not been confirmation by other ... read more ...

Generic Internet Top-Level Domain Names to Roll Out ‘as Soon as This Summer’ - The conventional website domain names with three letter TLDs such as .com, .org and .gov may soon be history as ICANN has approved the use of almost any name as a TLD.  The largest ever expansion of the internet naming system we know today may be rolled out as soon as this summer and we will begin to see full names as TLDs.  Some of the new domains proposed include .book, .google, .apple and .nyc.  This is the largest expansion in more than 10 years and it is ... read more ...

Governance Council Announced for .Music Top-Level Domain - A First for the Arts, Music Stakeholders Sought to Advise on Internet Policy June 3, 2013 (MMD Newswire) -- Dot Music Limited, whose mission is to pursue a new .Music top-level domain (gTLD), today invited music industry stakeholders to participate in the Governance Council that will provide input on the .Music TLD. Though Governance Councils have been established in the health, sports, and non-profit markets, the .Music Governance Council is the first to actively pursue input from those ... read more ...

ICANN Appoints First Two New gTLD Data Escrow Agents - ICANN announced today that it has selected the first two new gTLD Data escrow agents. All new gTLD registry operators will be required to regularly deposit a backup copy of their TLD registration data through one of the approved data escrow service providers. The data held in escrow may be released to ICANN under certain circumstances in order to preserve the stability of the TLD in case of an emergency. ICANN selected Iron Mountain Intellectual Property Management, Inc. and NCC Group have been ... read more ...

Verisign: ICANN Needs To Put Early Warning System In Place Not To Break Root - In the second  part 2 of a 5 part series of articles released by Verisign on its blog was written by Danny McPherson on the possible dangers of the impending rollout of the new gTLD program. Basically this post  chats about the DNS system, the root servers and the fact that the delegation of 1,000 new gTLD every year is a huge increase from what has been minimal growth over the years and urges ICANN to put into place an “early warning system …..to ensure that we have a well vetted “brakes” ... read more ...

OpenRegistry launches gTLD service -

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Via: managingip.com

.Club Domains LLC Raises $3.5 Million & Is Headed To Private Auction - .Club Domains, LLC an applicant for the new top level domain, (new gTLD) .CLUB, announced today that they have raised $3.5 Million dollars and is heading to a private auction next week. Earlier today Domainnamewire.com reported that .Club Domains, LLC filed a Form D with the “U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission seeking to raise up to $7 million”. It appears they raised half of that amount. I’m not sure about the strategy of announcing an amount raised when going into an auction but ... read more ...

Top Six GTLD Questions For Brands, According To Digital Brand Strategy Expert … - Share |Submit |RSS|Print|Comments Loading... With New gTLDs Set to Launch In the Next Six Months, Wolfe Addresses Most Critical Impacts in Internet Paradigm ShiftWith the first wave of generic top level domains (gTLDs) set to launch this summer, followed by a wave of brand-controlled domains in the fourth quarter of 2013 and into 2014, the new Internet is upon us. Jennifer Wolfe, president of Wolfe Domain, the leading gTLD digital brand strategy firm, today released the most pressing questions ... read more ...

Famous Four’s DotHealth Creates Governance Council To Provide Imput On … -   Dot Health Limited which is a Famous Four’s application to operate the new .Health top-level domain (gTLD), today announced the creation of a Governance Council that will allow the world health community to provide input on the .Health TLD. The Governance Council will be called upon to monitor, advise, and recommend best practices for the .Health gTLD. It is expected that the Governance Council will be comprised of practitioners, scientists, researchers, and others involved in health industries, ... read more ...

91 New gTLD Pass IE: .NYC, .Microsoft, .GOP; .Kiwi, .Monster, .Berlin, .Youtube - a Total of 91 new gTLD applications passed ICANN Initial Evaluation (IE)  including 8 applications which were previously passed over. This is the most new gTLD applications to pass IE in a single week and ICANN is now processing 100 new gTLD applications up from 50 per week as they promised would happen in June. This weeks more interesting new gTLD applications passing IE include two killer Geo’s .NYC and .Berlin; .budapest, a pseudo Geo of .Kiwi;  Google’s application for .youtube, Microsoft’s ... read more ...

Bill Sweetman Announces New Consulting Venture, Name Ninja - Last month, Bill Sweetman announced his departure from YummyNames and Tucows, and he informed us that he would be starting a new domain consulting business. At the time of his announcement, Sweetman didn’t offer many details about his venture, but in a press release that was distributed to me this morning, we now know it’s called Name Ninja, and it has a unique tagline, “lethal domain name consulting.” It appears that Name Ninja’s focus will primarily be on gTLD domain names, ... read more ...

New Trademark Headaches, But Help is On the Way Re: Internet Corporation for … - For brand owners that have often struggled to keep up with all the infringement and cybersquatting issues in the 22 existing generic top-level domain name registries, or “gTLDs”, like .com, .org, and .net, life is about to become even more challenging. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers’ (ICANN) planned expansion of gTLDs to potentially almost 2,000 in total has the potential to create major trademark enforcement headaches. In order to address some of those concerns ... read more ...

A fast moving target – the new gTLD "go live" date - Although the Trade Mark Clearing House is now open for registration of trade mark holders’ rights (see last update), the proposed 23 April date for the commencement of contracting with the first successfully examined gTLD applicants was not met and this process will now begin in June.  ICANN’s newly announced plan is to start pre-delegation testing, to launch the sunrise and trade mark claims systems in the Trade Mark Clearing House and also to commence the Uniform Rapid Suspension system ... read more ...

The new generic top-level domains and the new Trademark Clearinghouse … - The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (“ICANN”) is the organization that oversees domain names worldwide.  It recently began accepting new applications for expanding the number of generic top-level domains (“gTLDs”) on the Internet. The most popular gTLDs until now have included .com, .info, .org, and .net. With the approval of applications for new gTLDs will come an unlimited number of new opportunities on the Internet for entrepreneurs of all types, including trademark ... read more ...