“We are trying to anticipate and avoid as many of the pitfalls as possible,” said Tim Cole, chief registrar liaison for ICANN—the not-for-profit body that regulates Internet domain names. ICANN is creating a dispute resolution process that will enable trademark owners to oppose applications for new gTLDs.
Cole (pictured above) acknowledged the concerns of trademark holders, saying: “The IP community has insisted that we do a better job of compliance and we are doing so.” He pointed out that last week ICANN issued its first breach notice to a registrar (Red Registrar) for failing to implement a UDRP decision. Cole said that he hoped the new gTLD system will go live in February 2009.
As well as allowing new gTLDs, ICANN plans to introduce new internationalized top-level domains, which will make it easier for people whose languages use different alphabets to use the Internet. The new system will increase the number of characters available to form domain names from 37 to over 100,000.
Josh Bourne of FairWinds Partners explained that cybersquatters make money by maximizing clicks, as each click is worth around US$1.46. He said domains that exploit well-known trademarks, such as goole.com and mypsace.com, can generate around 10,000 visits a month, which means “the profitability is pretty eye-popping.”
One gTLD already approved by ICANN is .tel. Representatives of telnic, which runs .tel, told the INTA Daily News that details of how the sunrise period will work as well as pricing will be announced at the ICANN meeting in Paris in June. The sunrise is slated to open in the fourth quarter of 2008. It will be on a first-come, first-served basis with a validation process and dispute resolution procedure.
Dot-tel will provide a simple directory service, which comprises pure data rather than html code, making it easily accessible using mobile devices. Philip Colebrook, senior vice president business development and policy for telnic, said this should reassure brand owners concerned about cybersquatting: “We think there will be less exploitation by domainers because of the lack of scope for pay-per-click advertising.”
Berlin could benefit from proposals to introduce more gTLDs, as a German company is planning to apply to launch .berlin once ICANN approves the new gTLD process. The company, formed in 2005 by entrepreneur Dirk Krischenowski, is seeking corporate backing to be one of the first new gTLDs. Markus Bahmann of avocado rechtsanwälte, who is on the Board of .berlin and advises the company on legal issues, said it is now writing a sunrise policy: “We don’t want to be pirates.” He added that TLDs such as .berlin are likely to become more popular: “Regionalization of the Internet is going to be the future.” Other city-based TLDs that have been proposed include .hamburg, .paris and .nyc.
