DotConnectAfrica .Africa Objection treatment at ICANN becomes A Musical Chair Circus

DotConnectAfrica’s objection application treatment at ICANN and the hands through which the application passed, makes for a very interesting governance case at ICANN.   Owing to the highlighted conflict of interest cases in the past, its hard to determine how transparent and impartial it remained in determining the application’s destiny. At ICANN Board Level: Advice that …

ICANN Board Prohibits Dotless Domain Names

At its meeting on 13 August 2013, the ICANN Board New gTLD Program Committee (NGPC) adopted a resolution affirming that “dotless domain names” are prohibited. Dotless domain names are those that consist of a single label (e.g., http://example, or mail@example). Dotless names would require the inclusion of, for example, an A, AAAA, or MX, record …

ICANN: Potential Name Space Collision Report’s Impact on Contracting

As ICANN previously announced, we commissioned a study to consider the likelihood and impact of name space collisions between applied-for new gTLD strings and non-delegated TLDs. In light of that study, ICANN proposed to the community several possible mitigation measures, including: Proceeding with contracting and delegation of those strings categorized as “low risk” (80%) but …

150 RDNH cases highlight flaws with the UDRP; MountainRovers.com identified as the 150th RDNH

The UDRP complaint against MountainRovers.com has the dubious distinction of being the 150th case of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking identified so far. Five thoughts on this milestone- 1.  The problem of RDNH is getting worse.  The UDRP is used more frequently than ever to attempt to steal domain names from their rightful owners. The early …

.Bible becomes new domain of Bible websites

American Bible Society has won the rights to operate .bible, a new top-level domain (called gTLDs) to enter into an arena dominated by .com and .org. The application process has taken ABS over a year to secure .bible from the International Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which it says will be used by …

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 Publishes the Dotless Domain Name Study

5 August 2013 ICANN is pleased to announce the publication of the Dotless Domain Name Security and Stability Study Report [PDF, 1.02 MB] by IT Security firm, Carve Systems LLC (Carve Systems). Dotless domain names are those that consist of a single label (e.g., http://example, or mail@example). Dotless names would require the inclusion of, for …