ICANN: Contention Sets and New gTLD Auctions

Depending on the person, the word auction can bring to mind a dusty, hot structure full of livestock and a fast-talking announcer with a Western lilt to his voice or a cool, quiet room of well-dressed art patrons waiting for the next Impressionist masterpiece to be unveiled in a stately building on the Upper East …

USPTO: You Will Have To Contract With ICANN Before Applying For a Trademark For A New gTLD

Under the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) proposed examination guide, entitled “Applications for Marks Comprised of gTLDs for Domain Name Registration or Registry Services,” you will have to have a contract with ICANN to operate a new gTLD registry before you apply for a trademark for the gTLD: “The applicant must show that: …

ICANN suspends closed generic top level domain bids

Temporarily freezes move that could have led to global corporates monopolising the WWW by privatising domains like .beauty or .book   The Internet Corporation for Assigned Numbers and Names (ICANN) has put on hold a controversial decision to allot closed generic Top Level Domains (gTLD) to applicants. Governments and activists had feared that allotting such …

ICANN launches brand database for trademarks

Net address regulator ICANN has launched a database to allow businesses to register their brands, ahead of the release of a raft of new domain names. It is hoped the Trade Mark Clearing House (TMCH) will mitigate concerns about cyber-squatting and trademark infringement. Nearly 2,000 new suffixes, known as generic top-level domains (gTLD), will be …

Book publishers blast Amazon’s plan to control domain names

Two industry groups argue that the retailer’s plan to control several generic top-level domains, including .book, .author, and .read, would be anti-competitive. Amazon’s effort to control dozens of new generic top-level Internet domain names is drawing fire from a pair of publishing industry groups. The Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers oppose the …