Industry news from NetNames

In addition, several community members, including NetNames, who had submitted comments and proposals on trade mark protection in new TLDs were invited to participate in the IRT meeting held on 11 May 2009 in San Francisco.

There will be additional opportunities to discuss the IRT proposal at the Sydney meeting and in public consultations to be scheduled in July and August 2009. These consultations will take place in diverse geographic regions, and will provide a forum for ICANN to hear from the community on the effectiveness of proposals that address the overarching issues submitted by the IRT and others.

As directed by ICANN's Board in a recent resolution, the Intellectual Property Constituency of ICANN formed an Implementation Recommendation Team (IRT), to provide possible solutions to the trade mark protection issues raised by the proposed introduction of new gTLDs.

The IRT published its draft report on 24 April 2009.  The final report will be published no later than 24 May 2009 for consideration at the ICANN meeting in Sydney later this year. 

NetNames has prepared a briefing note on the draft output from the IRT for for customer reference and feedback.  Our briefing note is available here.

NetNames will certainly provide feedback and comment to the IRT and we encourage our clients to give us their feedback in order that we are best qualified to give it to ICANN.  Please email NetNames. Of course, there is nothing to stop NetNames customers giving feedback direct to ICANN.

As ICANN will be issuing a third draft, they would again welcome some feedback. Therefore if you are a brand owner or a representative from the IP community make sure you have your say!

You can submit feedback to ICANN before 13 April 2009 via the following routes:

• Submitting your comments directly to ICANN by clicking on the following link: http://blog.icann.org/.
• Sending your questions to marketing@netnames.com. We are happy to collate all opinions and forward them to ICANN by the deadline.

Jonathan and Rob covered the following topics in the webinar:

• The background to the new gTLDs and ICANN
• The first ‘Draft Applicant Guidebook’ and the application procedure
• Initial public feedback
• The latest ‘Draft Applicant Guidebook’ - key changes
• Unresolved issues
• Opportunities
• Next steps in the process
• What can NetNames do for you?

If you missed the webinar but you are still interested in seeing a copy of the slides, please contact marketing@netnames.com. We will be happy to send you the document.

If, once you’ve read the slides, you have some questions about the gTLDs, we would also be happy to arrange for one of our experts to contact you with some gTLD advice and guidance.

The article touches on subjects such as:

1) Defensive registrations of trade mark keywords

2) Domain name tasting and threats from typo squatters.

To read the article in full, click here.

The interview provides some useful insights into the history of the Internet, as well as some key points about domain name management and brand protection.

To read the article, click here.

The major areas of change since the first draft are as follows:

• Compliance

The provision and the scope of ICANN’s (revised) audit rights will be clarified and limited to the Registry Operator. For Registry Operators who are repeatedly problematic, ICANN proposes to bring action in front of an arbitrator and request the award of punitive damages.

• Registry/Registrar Separation

Deals with the potential for limited cross-ownership of Registries and Registrars. The proposed model will support small, targeted registries (including community-based applicants or single-entity TLDs); the thinking being that limited cross-ownership may provide economic and competitive benefit in the domain name market.

• Financial Considerations

It is proposed to reduce the base annual registry fee from US$75,000 to US$25,000. For registries with 50,000 or fewer registrations, no further fee would be charged. For registries with more than 50,000 registrations, it is proposed that the registry will pay ICANN US$0.25 per transaction-year. The proposed gTLD Evaluation Fee remains US$185,000.

• Geographical Names

The Draft Applicant Guidebook has been amended to make it easier to identify the different elements of geographic names and further, to reflect that a country or territory name in any language will require evidence of support, or non-objection from the relevant government or public authority.

• Auctions

Auctions are intended to be the mechanism of last resort for (gTLD) string contention resolution. ICANN proposes to return proceeds from auctions to the (Internet) community via a foundation.

• General Communications and Timeline

The previous timeline that estimated the launch of the application round in September 2009 is under reconsideration. There will now be a third draft version of the Guidebook and it is unlikely that the application round will open before December 2009.

ICANN has identified that there are a number of areas that require more work and attention. In particular, the prospective delay in the launch plan reflects the ICANN view that there are overarching questions remaining unanswered or incompletely answered.

One of the areas which caused widespread concern was the potential of the new gTLDs to add significantly to the costs for rights owners to bear in maintaining and defending their brands within the proposed myriad new namespaces. This is a key issue which NetNames focused on in our formal feedback to ICANN (http://forum.icann.org/lists/gtld-guide/msg00169.html).

ICANN believes that the overarching issues need more examination and discussion before they can be changed in a future draft Guidebook and they therefore remain unchanged in the current (second) draft.

The four key areas are as follows:

• Security and Stability

ICANN believes that security abuses associated with more TLDs are ultimately better dealt with through pragmatic implementation approaches than a set of predictions around which many would disagree. ICANN staff will be actively working on options for improvements in these areas over the next several months. Near coincident changes are planned for introduction into the root zone of IPv6 records, DNSSEC, IDNs and new TLDs, so the security and stability impacts of these will remain a key focus.

• Malicious Conduct

Concern was expressed that expanding the number of TLDs would also expand malicious behaviour on the Internet. One approach to addressing this would be for ICANN to conduct a study and attempt a forecast of expected behaviours with an expanded TLD name space.

• Trade mark Protection

ICANN intends to conduct a series of discussions with all relevant parties relating to proposed enhanced protections for trade mark holders. ICANN is also in discussions with Intellectual Property organisations around the world to coordinate setting up several conferences to propose some additional solutions to these issues. If additional trade mark protection mechanisms are agreed upon and included in the new gTLD implementation, the aim would be to reduce costs to trade mark holders, and increase and build more confidence in protection measures.

• Demand/Economic Analysis

ICANN will release a study on the dynamics of the domain name system in broad, as well as a study specifically related to the impact of the increase in gTLDs in the near future.

A full analysis of both the public comments and the key changes in the second draft is available here:
http://www.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/agv1-analysis-public-comments-18feb09-en.pdf

The full text of the second draft is available here:
http://www.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/draft-rfp-redline-18feb09-en.pdf

If you wish to comment or give feedback directly to ICANN, you can do so here:
http://www.icann.org/en/public-comment/#dagv2

So, what can we expect to hear about the new gTLDs?

• The main focus will be on the content of the second draft of the new gTLD Draft Applicant Guidebook. The latest draft version will be issued in the final days running up to the conference.
• Key information contained within the Guidebook that delegates will expect to be discussed at the conference are:
     o How ICANN plans to deal with an increase in malicious behaviours as a result of the new gTLDs
     o Changes to the evaluation criteria and application procedures
     o Changes to the fees that will need to be paid by gTLD operators

The gTLD sessions available for delegates at ICANN 34 are listed below:

• A public forum specifically dedicated to questions covering the new gTLD Applicant Guidebook
• ‘New gTLD Implementation Plan’
• ‘New gTLDs – Outline of Issues’
• ‘What the Applicant Guidebook Doesn’t Tell You’
• ‘How to Navigate ICANN for New Top Level Domain Applicants’
• ‘The Economics of Top Level Domains’
• ‘New gTLD Overview’

Jonathan Robinson, COO of NetNames says: “All indications are that ICANN is committed to the launch of many new gTLDs.  Brand owners see this as either an opportunity or a threat and in some cases, both.  However, regardless of their feelings on the introduction of new gTLDs, brand owners need to take an informed and pro-active approach to this major change.  NetNames is firmly committed to assisting brand owners to develop an offensive, defensive or combination strategy together with an action plan, and has the ability to help with every step of the process.

If you wish to attend ICANN 34, you can find out more details about the conference by visiting http://mex.icann.org/.

Alternatively, if you have opinions about the new gTLDs that you wish to be heard even though you cannot attend, you can do one of two things:

• Send your questions to NetNames (marketing@netnames.com) and our representatives who will be attending will ask the questions on your behalf, or
• Submit your questions to ICANN’s online question box at http://blog.icann.org/. All questions will be compiled by ICANN and answered at gTLD sessions throughout the conference. Responses to questions will also be sent to the people who submitted the questions after the conference.

If you have any other related feedback or questions, please get in touch with us at NetNames. We would very much appreciate hearing from you and will do our best to inform and assist you.

Key pieces of information to take away from the video include:

• ICANN received over 1000 feedback responses during the last public comments period. The feedback has been anaylsed and the results will be fed into the next draft of the Applicant Guidebook.
• The feedback was mainly from brand owners and industry associations who are concerned about topics such as brand protection and the increase in malicious behaviours that may emerge from the introduction of the new gTLDs; the scale of new domain names after the introduction of the new gTLDs and IDNs; the cost of the new gTLDs.
• The latest edition of the draft Applicant Guidebook will be issued in five languages and presented to the community at the 34th ICANN International Public Meeting in Mexico City from 1-6 March 2009.
• The new draft will include changes to the evaluation criteria, more detailed procedures for applying for the gTLDs, and changes to the fees that will need to be paid by gTLD operators.

An interesting quote on the video from CEO Paul Twomey - presumably in response to feedback from brand owners and industry associations about the lack of demand for the new gTLDs - is as follows:

"Innovation is not something driven simply by demand in the marketplace. It is provided also by the opportunities in the structure of the marketplace and the technology available. We would not have a Skype, a Google, or a Facebook simply because people said "Would you like a Facebook?". These all came from entrepreneurs offering opportunities to the market and seeing what is feasible in an environment of innovation. That is an important part of the framework in which we need to consider the new gTLD round."

ImageFlare is a part of NetNames’ Brand Protection suite of services, and is a unique search facility that can report on where your logo or image is being used on the internet. It relies on powerful proprietary technology developed by NetNames’ sister company Envisional® and is a revolutionary technology like no other.

ImageFlare can be used to detect a wide range of threats to your brand and help you prevent the following:

• Counterfeit sales - Detect fakes or organisations piggybacking on your goodwill
• Customer hijacking - Uncover criminals or scammers who use your logo to divert customers to rival sites or sites that damage your brand
• Logo and trade mark abuse - Identify those falsely claiming to be your partners or distributors 
• Use of ‘near-miss’ logos - Find copies or re-makes of your logo or trade marks that are adapted, mutated or faked

ImageFlare can also help you internally by enabling you to manage multi-site rebranding and control the use of your logo amongst legitimate users such as your branches, subsidiaries, affiliates and distributors.

Brand owners have told us that there’s nothing like ImageFlare on the market!

To find out how ImageFlare can help you protect your logo or trade mark, please contact us at
platinum@netnames.com or your local office, or visit the ImageFlare page on our website for more information.

Some of the key concerns raised in the feedback are:

• Brand protection issues and the impact on brands and trademark owners 
• Financial considerations, including evaluation fees, ongoing registry fees, and refund procedures 
• Various issues surrounding the proposed registry agreement, particularly, price controls, registry/registrar separation, the management of future agreement amendments, equitable treatment, and others 
• General comments and concerns related to expanding the top level and its impact on the global marketplace, specific industries and Domain Name System stability.

The comments are now being evaluated and a comprehensive analysis of the feedback will be released in early February, ahead of the 34th ICANN International Public Meeting in Mexico City from 1-6 March 2009.

The decision means that companies could turn brands into web addresses while individuals could use their names.
Some believe there could be at least 5,000 new top-level domains, but others say there could be demand for billions.
Peter Dengate Thrush, a member of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), said the decision was of "historic importance".
The new system should come in next year, but ICANN admits there will be plenty of problems, and it may have to arbitrate between different organisations seeking the same name.

Jonathan Robinson, Chief Operating Officer at the domain name management specialist NetNames (www.netnames.com) assesses decision’s impact on the industry.

“While it is clear the Internet domain name structure needs to evolve, the ICANN vote in favour of opening up Top Level Domains (TLDs) leads to complex questions for marketers and trademark owners.

“It can be argued that the expansion of available suffixes is the equivalent of opening a can of worms in terms of online infringement and cybersquatting – it seems logical to assume that as domain numbers increase, so too will the levels of speculative activity.   

“Brand owners may find themselves in the position of having to register numerous new domains to protect themselves but, with varying fee estimates that could well turn out to be an untenable marketing expense for some. Nonetheless, the impact on existing domains remains to be seen. In the case of a big brand, presumably any browsers visiting a newly registered domain would be redirected to the original TLD in any case. There will also be question marks over how new domains will affect Search Optimisation and consequent site traffic and PPC advertising rates.

“One thing that does seem clear is, with the final pricing and potential refund and dispute procedures not yet in place for applicants, brand owners and the trademark community will be keeping an extremely close eye on developments in the coming months.

Since 1997 the .nu domain's policies have restricted the registration of number-only and number-with-hyphen domains. Last year, .nu domain modified this policy slightly and began allowing the registration of 1- and 2-character numeric names as part of its launch of a premium domain name service. But as of 10 June, with some exceptions, they have started to permit the general registration of any combination of numbers or numbers-with-hyphens, in the .nu domain name space.

There are now two classes of numeric .nu domain names:
Premium numeric names, comprised only of numeric names using three numbers or numbers in combination with a hyphen (1-4.nu), which will be available to register for a one-year (or greater) term and standard numeric names, comprised of all other numeric and numeric-with-hyphen combinations up to 63 characters long. Names that are five numeric characters long, which are commonly used as postal codes, and certain other numeric names of high public or private interest, including 888.nu, 411.nu, and others will not be released for registration during the 10 June Landrush period. .nu domain will make them available for registration at a later time.
 
Please contact you NetNames Platinum Service account manager with any questions or queries.

For this reason the Registry is currently not accepting new orders, modification or DNS updates, but existing DNS resolution will remain
unaffected. Any orders placed with NetNames will be queued until the Registry re-opens at which point they will be submitted.
Please contact your Platinum Service account manager with any queries.

The University of Puerto Rico previously operated the .kn registry but wanted to divest themselves of the task according to the ICANN board meeting 30 April preliminary report. The report notes the re-delegation request was received from relevant government representatives to move it to the Ministry of Finance, Sustainable Development, Information and Technology of Saint Kitts and Nevis. The operations are to be conducted by the ccTLD operator for .tw (TWNIC).

The Registry is therefore planning to open .mp up to anyone who is interested, however prior to that they are running a Sunrise period to trademark holders until 31 August 2008. They are warning trademark holders that once the domain is opened up to all, that those who have not taken advantage of this Sunrise opportunity may recover trademark derived .mp domain names through UDRP administered by WIPO.
 
.mp Sunrise Eligibility Requirements
In order to be eligible for registration of a .mp domain name during the Sunrise Period, the Applicant must satisfiy the following conditions:

The Applicant is the owner, co-owner, or assignee of a current (non-expired) trademark registration in its name. The Applicant cannot be merely the licensee of a mark covered by a trademark registration. Moreover, a registration in the supplemental register is not sufficient.

The domain name includes textual or word elements which are identical to the trademark registration on which the application is based.

Identity will be deemed to exist also where there is a space between the textual or word elements of the trademark (e.g., "service mark") and, in the domain name, a hyphen is used or the elements are combined (e.g., <service-mark.mp> or <servicemark.mp>). Identity will also be deemed to exist when special characters in the trademark, such as ~!@#$%^&*()_+<>[]{}/\|, spaces, and punctuation (such as :;"',.?), are, in the domain name, eliminated entirely (no space), replaced by hyphens within a domain name, or transcribed in a conveniently accepted way. A trademark registration for "Service&Mark" will be considered identical with <servicemark.mp>, <service-mark.mp>, or <serviceandmark.mp>. If the trademark contains letters which contain additional elements that for technical reasons cannot be reproduced in the domain name, such as ä, é or ñ, the letters concerned must, in the domain name, be reproduced without these elements (such as ä, é or ñ), or must be replaced by conventionally accepted spellings (such as æ for ä). In all other respects, the domain name must include textual or word elements which are identical to the mark, although the domain name may include other terms (e.g. the domain name <servicemarksucks.com> shall be deemed to include textual or word elements which are identical to "service mark").

The trademark registration on which the application is based is of national effect, and its relevant textual or word elements have not been disclaimed. For example, United States federal trademark registrations and European Community trademarks meet the condition of national effect, but United States state trademark registrations (e.g., New York) do not.

The trademark on which the application is based was registered or applied for in the name of the applicant, prior to July 1, 2007 with the trademark authority with which the trademark is registered. It is also sufficient if the applicant had applied for the trademark before that date, provided that the trademark is registered by the time of the domain name application.

The domain name is not already reserved.

Please contact your NetNames Platinum Service account manager for further information or email http://platinum@netnames.com.

During this quiet period all Sunrise applications will be reviewed and domains with multiple valid applicants will be assigned through an auction among the applicants that passed the validation. NetNames is now accepting Land rush orders.

.ME Launch schedule;
May 1 2008 15:00 UTC (Universal Coordinated Time) - May 6 2008 17:00 UTC: Montenegrin Sunrise -  now closed
May 6 2008 17:00 UTC - May 20 2008 17:00 UTC: General Sunrise – now closed
May 20 2008 17:00 UTC - June 6 2008 15:00 UTC: Quiet period - in progress
June 6 2008 15:00 UTC - June 26 2008 17:00 UTC: Land rush
June 26 2008 17:00 UTC - July 17 2008 15:00 UTC: Quiet period
July 17 2008 15:00 UTC: Open registration (Domain names are registered on a first-come, first-served basis)
September 2008 (“Premium Names? auctions expected to begin).

Please contact your NetNames Platinum Service account manager or contact platinum@netnames.com for further information.

• The existing 20-domain-per-registrant limit will be lifted; there will be no more limits on how many .si domains each registrant may own.  
Natural persons will be able to register .si domain names (now only legal entities were allowed to register .si domain names).

• Residence of the registrants will no longer be limited i.e. non-Slovenian entities (both legal as well as natural persons) will also be allowed to register .si domain names

• Registrations and renewals will be possible for more than 1 year; the registry will allow renewals for up to 5 years

• Ownership changes (both registrar and registrant) will become a payable transaction. Ownership change will, however, no longer reset the domain's expiration date as it does now

• Domain's expiration date will stay the same after the transfer

• Natural persons will have the option to "return" the domain name within 15 days from the registration date. Legal entities will not have this option.

The exact date the new rules will come into effect is not yet published, but we have been advised that it is likely to be October 9th, 2008.
Once we have further information it will be puclished.
For further details contact your NetNames Platinum Service account manager or contact platinum@netnames.com.

pr -  Puerto Rico introduce Internationalised Domain Names (IDN's). 
The Puerto Rican Registry has announced that applicants can now register .pr domain names using Internationalised Domain Names (IDN's). The introduction of these new domain names now enables Spanish, French, German and Portuguese speakers to register using words commonly used in those languages such as muñeca.pr, teléfonos.pr, garçon.pr, schön.pr, or amanhã.pr.
 
There is an IDN converter at: www.netnames.com/idn. Please contact your account manager to place an order, or call 0870 458 9401

It comes as no surprise that today there is an estimated $2 billion domain name industry. The buying and selling of domain names and pay-per-click advertising revenue for the owners of premium domain names has been growing like wildfire. Verisign claims that worldwide, an estimated that 90,000 new domain names are being registered every day. According to industry experts, the domain industry’s market value could reach $4 billion by 2010. At least 128 million domain names had been registered worldwide by March 2007, a 31 percent increase over the previous year, according to VeriSign. Jerry Nolte, managing partner of Domainer’s Magazine said it best, “This industry is like the wild, wild west right now and people have no idea how fast it’s growing."

On October 25th, the .us TLD registry contract with current oprator NeuStar is set to expire. And now the U.S. Department of Commerce files a Request For Quotations (RFQ) to manage and operate the .us domain registry. All relevant links are listed below:

http://www.ntia.doc.gov/vendors/usTLD01_070707.htm
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/vendors/usTLD_RFQ_070707.pdf

During the Sunrise period last year there were some comments questioning that EURid accepted domain names based on a prior right to a name including an ampersand or other special characters. When that name was made into a domain name (without the ampersand) it became a word for which others also showed an interest. Now a Belgian court has decided that EURid’s interpretation of the Sunrise rules (to accept ampersand names) indeed was correct.

It was all about article 11 of the Regulation that provided that where the name for which prior rights were claimed contains special characters, spaces or punctuations, these should be eliminated entirely from the corresponding domain name, replaced with hyphens or, if possible, rewritten. Some wanted EURid to reject the ampersand applications since the applicant was not free to eliminate the ampersand if he could rewrite or replace it.

The Court now confirmed that the applicant was completely free to choose one of the three options mentioned in article 11 of the Regulation. It was not up to EURid to question this choice.