.Africa gTLD: ICANN Loses MSJ, Back to Legal Arena

The battle for the control of the .Africa top level domain may yet become more protracted after a recent court decision to have the case proceed to trial. BackGround DotConnectAfrica (DCA) Trust after winning an IRP and still rejected by ICANN went to court and filed its first Amended Complaint (“FAC”) on 26 February 2016, …

.Amazon IRP Panel Notes the Precedential status of DCA Trust .Africa

The ICANN new gTLD process attracted over 1,930 new applications to be added into the root from 60 countries and territories. Of the applications received, 66 were geographic name applications while 116 applications made for Internationalized Domain Names, or IDNs, for strings in scripts such as Arabic, Chinese, and Cyrillic. Broken down by ICANN’s geographic …

CentralNic, DCA Trust’s Registry Partner Profit Triples in FY 2015; Revenue Hikes by 70%

Financial results from CentralNic Group Plc (LON:CNIC) show the web domains group continues to add scale to is business, something that will be further boosted by the recent acquisition of Instra Group in January. CentralNic which is the back-end provider for many new gTLD extensions including .africa, applied for by DotConnectAfrica, .xyz which has the …

ZACR CEO Declaration on .Africa biased, misleading, conclusory & without foundation, details DCA Trust

In support of its Motion to Reconsider and Vacate Preliminary Injunction Ruling, Defendant ZA Central Registry, NPC (“ZACR”) relied upon the Declaration of its current CEO Mokgabudi Lucky Masilela (“Masilela Decl.”). However,  DotConnectAfrica Trust fires back in opposition, via a response it filed on May 16th 2016 presenting detailed evidentiary objections to his declaration, some …

BNA: DCA Trust, the Applicant for .Africa Domain Challenges ICANN Litigation Waiver

As published by BNA:  An applicant for the .africa top-level Internet domain fired back at domain overseer the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), saying in a March 21 court filing that its blanket litigation waiver is unconscionable DotConnectAfrica Trust v. ICANN, C.D. Cal., No. 2:16-cv-00862, reply brief filed 3/21/16. This is the …

Applicant for .Africa Domain DCA Trust, Challenges ICANN Litigation Waiver

By Joseph Wright for BNA The article was first published by The Bureau of National Affairs, but has been reproduced from DotConnectAfrica Blog.  Reproduced with permission from Electronic Commerce & Law Report, 21 ECLR 441 (March 30, 2016). Copyright 2016 by The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc (800-372-1033)). An applicant for the .africa top-level Internet …

3 African initiatives win 7000USD from the 2015 Miss.Africa Seed Fund

Three African girls and women STEM initiatives have won a total of 7,000 United States Dollars from the inaugural Miss.Africa Seed Fund from the Miss. Africa Initiative, a pan-african trust program of DotConnectAfrica (DCA).   Over 90 applicants from more than 18 Countries in Africa across the African continent applied for the Fund. Among the …

DCA Trust Slams AUC Commissioner of Infrastructure’s interference letter to ICANN Geographic Panel

The CEO of DCA Trust has written a cautionary letter to the ICANN following an unsolicited letter by the Africa Union Commissioner of Infrastructure, Elham Ibrahim to the independent geographic names evaluation panel on 29th August 2015 following the July 2015 ruling where DCA Trust successfully fought and won against ICANN for the .africa handling. …

CentralNic says the introduction of the .BANK domain name will help fight online fraud

Internet domain name specialist CentralNic (LON:CNIC) says the introduction of the  .BANK domain name will help combat online fraud. Today, the  firm which is also a registry partner for .Africa new gTLD applicant DCA Trust revealed that the .BANK domain names are now available through its London-based division CentralNic FinTech; this new end-part to Internet …