ICANN Trademark Clearinghouse To Start Accepting Registrations This Month

Intellectual Property Watch By Kelly Burke for Intellectual Property Watch The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has announced that its Trademark Clearinghouse database, through which rights holders can submit their eligible trademarks prior to and during ICANN’s launch of new domains, will start operating on 26 March. Any trademark holder, private person, or …

Ethiopian Government shuns African Union Hosted ICANN Africa Strategy Meeting In Addis Ababa

Absence may be attributed to the AU bypassing Ethiopian immigration protocol without declaring itself as the host of the event officially and providing behind the scene logistical accommodation for ICANN and participants. ICANN participated with the regional IG community in two important events in March 2013.  These events were attended by regional stakeholders from government, the private sector and civil society. The …

DotConnectAfrica Responds to Kevin Murphy’s ‘Nutty’ commentaries – 2 Rejoinders in 48 hours!

A flurry of response exchanges were featured in last week between the Domain on industry columnist Kevin Murphy of DomainIncite and DotConnectAfrica (DCA), one of  gTLD applicants for .africa.   DCA sent two rejoinders in 24 hours responding to his comments and  to provide detailed answers with an aim to clarify what it has termed …

.HEINZ & .KETCHUP New gTLD Applications Withdrawn

ICANN has posted on its site the withdrawal of two more new gTLD applications bring the total of withdrawn applications to 21. “ProMark Brands Inc. (“ProMark”), a subsidiary of H.J. Heinz Company (“Heinz”), had filed this application for a .KETCHUP gTLD with the intention of bringing to market a trusted, hierarchical, and intuitive namespace for …