Anyone who uses the Internet will be affected by a tsunami of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) – the space to the right of the dot – perhaps as many as 1,400 within the next two years. This will mark one of the biggest changes to the Internet since it came into common use.

To gauge the impact of this change on consumers in particular, FairWinds is conducting a series of market research surveys on awareness of and attitudes toward new gTLDs.

The second in this series of surveys was released today and can be downloaded here. A third survey will be released in the coming months as new gTLDs begin to roll out. The first of this series was released in December 2012 and can be downloaded here.

FairWinds’ second survey found that consumers:

• Are open to using new gTLDs to navigate the Internet
• Are willing to trust new gTLDs
• Prefer .BRANDs to .GENERICs
• Prefer direct navigation over search engine navigation
• Expect companies to be technically prepared for new gTLDs

These findings underscore the fact that Internet users are untethered to the past, are open minded, and are receptive to new ways of doing things. FairWinds also discovered that Internet users prefer taking control of their Internet experiences and pay attention to what they type into the browser bar.

Brand owners – whether they applied for a new gTLD or not – can draw valuable lessons from FairWinds’ research. Internet users indicated they expect to see their favorite brands adopt and use new gTLDs and that poor online user experiences will lead to lost revenue and lost marketing opportunities for brand owners.

The better brand owners understand consumer behavior, the better prepared they will be to optimize use of their new gTLDs and remain competitive in the new Internet space.

Ad Age recently published a feature on bloggers scoring millions of dollars in funding for their own startups, featuring entrepreneurs Geri Hirsch, the brains behind the “fashion-lifestyle blog” Because I’m Addicted, and Michelle Phan of beauty-tutorial YouTube fame.

Ms. Hirsch’s success with videos produced for Barneys New York caught the eye of Youtube-backed video site StyleHaul. S then turned the success of the video into a StyleHaul investment in her new video lifestyle brand venture, Leaf (which, according to the YouTube page, is ” a fresh, easy to consume, how-to concept covering all things… living, eating and fashion”). Ms. Phan used her success to start a monthly “beauty bag” subscription service – a sort of makeup of the month club that delivers new cosmetics bags of loot each month, and which now has $1.5 million in monthly sales.

The branding success of these two bloggers could bode well for creative use of the new gTLD .BLOG – beyond a community of bloggers sharing thoughts, photos, and experiences. As blogging and marketing become more integrated, will blogs look more like .BRANDs with reviews, launch events, and new places to feature how-to videos of products? Will domain names ending in .BLOG host more “lifestyle” portals, where brands are woven into the blog content?

And how will .BLOG be integrated with existing services that gather bloggers into communities, such as Collective Bias, which Brandchannel describes as a “platform where brands such as Tyson, Nestle and Smart & Final pay for their products to be covered by relevant bloggers who push that content across social media”?

Nine companies, including Google, applied for .BLOG so the content of that gTLD likely will be tied to the company that wins the extension.

With the growing role of bloggers in brand marketing, .BLOG is a generic gTLD that brand owners should watch – not just as a place to register domain names but also, for opportunities to collaborate with bloggers.

Well, it’s not too confusing for ICANN, as the tealeaf readers suspected in late February when ICANN announced only two non-exact contention sets. Both .CAREER and .CAREERS, along with other singular/plural matching terms, can move forward.

In a meeting with the ICANN Board today, a representative from ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) expressed concern about the potential for consumer confusion caused by these types of strings, noting that many others share this concern. In response, the Board stated that it won’t second-guess the results of the Independent Panel, which was charged by ICANN to make the final call on contention sets. The Board continued, saying said that the GAC should feel free to issue advice on this topic, but that the Independent Panel did look at the plural/singular terms, considered the possibility of confusion due to visual similarity, and ultimately decided that the existence of both terms would not cause confusion. And that’s that.

The concern is a valid one, however, and there could be serious consequences to the Board’s decision. Brands looking to protect their trademarks will have to consider registering in twice as many new gTLDs as they would have otherwise. Internet users will wonder what the difference between .CAREER and .CAREERS content is. And in any future application rounds, anyone could piggyback on successful gTLDs by adding an “S” on the end and filing an application of their own.

For those following ICANN’s gTLD launch process, the Board’s decision was puzzling in part because the Board acted as if the Independent Panel’s decision was independent, when in fact the panel was established by ICANN and has conducted its activities behind closed doors. While the Board pretends to not have a say in the matter, stakeholders once again really don’t have a say in the matter.

In fact, there is no deadline for registering trademarks. The TMCH will accept registrations on a rolling basis, as trademark owners submit them. It is up to the trademark owner to decide when it will register, and this is a decision that should be driven by each trademark owner’s particular protection needs.

For example, if a company is concerned about its presence in Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) – in non-Latin scripts such as Cyrillic, Japanese, Arabic, or Hindi – they should plan to file their trademarks early because the IDNs will be delegated first.

Deloitte’s announcement this week indicates that, even if ICANN is able to meet the projected April 23 date for the first new gTLD delegations, the Sunrise periods for those gTLDs may not take place until late May. Thus, trademark owners should, for the most part, plan on registering their marks in the two months after March 26.

Other TMCH timeline changes made after vigorous debate with ICANN stakeholders:

Trademark Claims service extended from 60 to 90 days

The Trademark Claims Service (more detail here) alerts both the registrant and the registry when someone tries to buy a domain that is an “Identical Match” to a trademark found in the TMCH.

This notification system originally was set to run for 60 days after general registration opens in that gTLD. Registry Operators had the option to run it longer. Now, the notification system will be required to run for at least 90 days.

The Impact:

This change provides an extra 30-day cushion. The Trademark Claim Service is an alert system and does not block an attempted registration. So it might stop some registrants from registering “Identical Match” domain names, but it will do little more than slow down more determined cybersquatters.

Clearinghouse will accept previously abusive registrations

Each trademark owner can submit up to 50 “domain labels” that were registered abusively in the past. For example, if FairWinds Partners filed a successful UDRP complaint to reclaim FairWWindsPartners.TLD, then it could submit “FairWWindsPartners” to the TMCH. The trademark owner has to prove that the “domain label” was registered abusively by showing a successful URDP complaint that resulted in a domain transfer to the trademark owner.

The Impact:

The TMCH will become the repository of more than just “identical matches,” at least for the purposes of the Claims service. Claims notices will be sent to the registrant and the rightful owner whenever there is any attempt to register “domain labels” as domain names. Again, the benefit of the Trademark Claims Service is limited, but it provides a broader scope of protection.

Each Sunrise period will be preceded by a 30-day notice

The Sunrise period will allow trademark owners to register domains that are identical matches to their trademark before cybersquatters have the chance to register the domains. Now, 30 days before the Sunrise, gTLD Registry Operators will have to inform the public of the timing and rules of the Sunrise.

The Impact:

Trademark owners will have time to prepare to protect their marks with each wave of gTLD launches.

The decision to abandon the application for .CHEVROLET was understandable, considering that the company had also applied for .CHEVY. But to leave behind .CADILLAC and .GMC, both of which correspond to well-known GM brands, was perplexing, considering the high level at which the automobile industry is participating in the New gTLD Program, with nearly every major auto manufacturer applying for their flagship brand as well as sub-brands. Ford, for example, applied for both .FORD and .LINCOLN, BMW applied for .BMW as well as .MINI, and Toyota applied for both .TOYOTA and .LEXUS. Fiat notably applied for six gTLDs, including .FERRARI and .MASERATI.

Of course, there is always a cost factor to consider. Withdrawing a gTLD application now, when Initial Evaluation is underway but the first results have not yet been posted, means a refund of 70 percent of the application fee, or $130,000 per application.

But at this point in time, when it is clear from the sheer size of the New gTLD Program that new gTLDs will undoubtedly have an impact on the way businesses and consumers use the Internet, but it is not yet clear exactly what that impact will be, it’s worth considering another cost: the opportunity cost of withdrawing.

Now that applications have been submitted, new gTLD applicants are moving through evaluation on the path toward delegation. ICANN has indicated that the first new gTLDs could launch as soon as late April or early May of this year. There is no doubt that some applicants may want to launch as soon as possible, but for those that are not interested in diving headfirst into this as-yet unknown territory, there are multiple points at which they can delay the launch of their gTLDs. If you pull together all of those possible delays, an applicant could easily delay the launch of its gTLD – and the onset of the fees associated with operating that gTLD – for more than three years.

Additionally, once the gTLD is launched, a company has the option of warehousing it, or meeting the minimum requirements to keep it active, until it is ready to begin using it more actively. Warehousing a new gTLD could cost a company as little as $75,000 per year.

Here’s where the opportunity cost comes in. Of course, spending $75,000 per year, even a few years down the road, is more expensive than receiving $130,000 up front, right now. But at this point, the new gTLD train has left the station for the foreseeable future. It is possible that ICANN won’t give the public another chance to apply for gTLDs for another five or ten years, or more. If that happens, applicants that chose to withdraw their applications will have no choice but to wait.

The bottom line is, withdrawing a new gTLD application is irreversible, and the decision must be made at a time when there is still little information in the marketplace. On the other hand, now that the time and money have already been invested in applying, applicants have the option to take a cautious, wait-and-see approach to launching their new gTLDs, taking the time to learn from others and make a more informed decision later.

So the question is, what is the opportunity cost of sitting on the sidelines of what will become the biggest change to the Internet since the introduction of .COM? And is that worth more than a refund of $130,000?

Without a doubt, the most significant change to the RA is the addition of Specification 11, which outlines new “Public Interest Commitments” (PICs) that applicants will have to uphold. The PICs fall into three sections; the first refers to which registrars a new gTLD Registry Operator may work with. Specifically, it states that the Registry Operator will only use accredited registrars that are party to the newest version of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement. This agreement is still undergoing refinement within the ICANN community, however, and the final version has not yet been published.

The second and third sections of the PICs are commitments that Registry Operators can choose to impose on themselves. Registry Operators have the option to select commitments, business plans or other intentions stated in their new gTLD applications that will become binding aspects of the RA under this specification (Section 2), or they can create new binding commitments and outline them in Section 3.

What has been confusing to many is that the PICs, aside from Section 1, are not technically required. Applicants do not have to add any additional required elements to their RAs. So what would motivate an applicant to add any commitments? Generally speaking, this may be an opportunity for certain applicants that received Early Warnings from ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee or other precautionary feedback from governments or other authorities to ease their concerns. For example, if an applicant applied for a new gTLD with the intention of operating it in a completely open and unrestricted manner, but a government representative or other authority expressed concern that doing so would mislead and ultimately harm consumers, then it may be beneficial for the applicant to add a PIC stating that the gTLD will be operated in a more restrictive manner than originally implied by the application.

Unfortunately, applicants that do wish to add PICs to their Registry Agreements have only a short time to do so – ICANN expects to receive applications for PICs by March 5.

ICANN’s decision to make these changes in what some members of the community have called a unilateral manner also raises some issues. All proposed changes are open for Public Comment until February 26, so you can expect to see some discussion of this issue in that forum.

What stood out about this ad for us, aside from the very enticing vacation spots, was the very end, where the Booking.com logo gets replaced with the tagline “Booking.Yeah.” It’s clever and catchy, of course, but Booking.Yeah looks an awful lot like the kind of string we could see as a domain name once new gTLDs begin to launch. Although no applications were submitted for a .YEAH gTLD, Booking.com did apply for two gTLDs of its own: .BOOKING and .HOTELS. Could this commercial be the first in a series of ads designed to “prime the pump,” as they say, or to get consumers accustomed to seeing and understanding two words separated by a dot?

It wouldn’t be a bad way to start, considering that our own research here at FairWinds revealed that consumers’ awareness of new gTLDs is extremely low. But where does the line between educational and misleading fall? FairWinds’ Domain Name Strategy blog recently pointed out that Forex.com’s mobile site sports the title “Forex.Wireless,” which could become especially confusing for Internet users in the near future, considering that .MOBI already exists as a domain name extension and numerous applications have been submitted for other related terms like .MOBILE and .APP.

There’s no doubt that once new gTLDs begin to launch, the task of navigating to content online will become more confusing for Internet users. New gTLD applicants should be considering how they can begin mitigating this confusion now to facilitate the introduction of their new gTLDs – and users’ navigation to their new gTLD domain names – further down the road. It will be worth following Booking.com’s future advertisements to see if this is indeed the company’s goal and if it pays off.

Domain Incite points out that some of the most popular Web browsers, including Safari versions 5 and 6, Internet Explorer 9 and Chrome v24, have had trouble resolving functional domain names in some or all of those extensions. Websites in each of these TLDs have been live since 2012 – even .POST, the most recently launched of the three, has hosted live second-level domains since October. And yet, some of the world’s most popular browsers are having trouble recognizing these TLDs as legitimate domain extensions.

This browser confusion raises an interesting issue for the owners of future new gTLDs, as well as for any company or individual that owns an interactive, public-facing website. That is, the issue of new gTLD compatibility. The way Web browsers work, on a very simplistic level, is by checking the domain names that users type into the address bar against a set of viable options, both at the top level and at the second level. Essentially, browsers perform a task of validating a domain name – if it is valid, the browser returns a website; if not, it returns an error page or (as in the case with Google’s Chrome), it redirects to different content.

But Web browsers are not the only applications that perform this kind of validation. Any given company or corporation has multiple systems, applications and forms that have to perform a similar task. As an example, think about the feature most websites have that allows an Internet user to sign up for emails. It seems simple enough – the user types in his or her email address and gets added to the company’s database. But a system has to check that email address in order to determine if it is valid or not, and it does so by validating the domain name. Gmail.com is a valid domain for an email address, but Mail.Google, for example, is not (yet).

Other systems that perform this type of domain validation include pages that require login credentials, ecommerce checkout platforms, bill payment systems, job applications, email contact forms, mobile applications, invoices, order management systems, and lead capturing or sales systems.

The problem is that currently, most systems that validate domain names – either in email addresses or for other purposes – check the domain against a static list of possibilities. This has generally worked in the current landscape because the number of domain extensions was finite. But as the .SX, .CW and .POST example proves, relying on a process of updating the static list every time a new extension is added can lead to errors. Instead, businesses and website owners should focus their efforts on developing dynamic domain validation systems.

All businesses will need to be aware of the issue of gTLD systems compatibility and prepare to respond to it in the next four to six months, as the first new gTLDs begin to launch. This will be an important step to staying current and adapting to the new digital landscape. But more importantly, businesses that fail to keep up when it comes to gTLD compatibility could risk losing sales or customers.

Basic Fee Structure

This structure is only available to Trademark Holders, who are required to pay by credit card and can register up to ten trademarks for a term of one, three or five years. The pricing for each registration is as follows (please note that all prices in this post are in U.S. dollars):

All in all, the Basic Fee Structure is, in a word, pretty basic.

Advanced Fee Structure

This is where it starts to get a bit more complicated. The Advanced Fee Structure offers discounted pricing based on a system of “Status Points.” Both Trademark Holders and Trademark Agents can participate in this structure, but in order to do so they must open up a Prepayment Account, which requires a deposit of $15,000 (credit cards are not accepted).

Holders and Agents can obtain Status Points by registering and renewing trademark registrations. Each one-year registration or renewal is worth one point, and three- and five-year registrations and renewals are worth four and seven points, respectively. The more Status Points one acquires, the lower the prices for subsequent registrations and renewals:

As you can see, it takes a high number of status points to obtain a meaningful discount, making the Advanced Fee Structure a much more attractive option for Trademark Agents than Trademark Holders – especially considering that the prices for up to 3,000 status points are basically the same as the fees in the Basic Fee Structure.

Early Bird Registration

There is one more twist in the TMCH pricing scheme, an Early Bird Registration discount. The Early Bird period will run from the day the TMCH opens (still yet to be determined) until the calendar day before the first Sunrise period of the first new gTLD to launch opens. So, if the first gTLD launches its Sunrise period on May 1, 2013, then Trademark Holders and Agents who register in the TMCH on or before April 30, 2013 will get the Early Bird Registration benefits. For one, they will be eligible for additional Status Points – one additional point for each three-year registration and two additional points for each five-year registration. But more importantly, instead of expiring on the anniversary of the registration date, trademarks registered during the Early Bird period will expire of the anniversary of the calendar day prior to the day the first new gTLD launches its Sunrise period.

In other words, if a Trademark Holder or Agent registers a mark for a one-year registration on February 20, 2013 and the first gTLD launches its Sunrise period on May 1, 2013, the registration will expire on April 30, 2014, not on February 20, 2014. This essentially equates to two free months of registration. While the monetary value may not be huge, it will be worth it for many brand owners to register their marks early so they have one less administrative detail to worry about once Sunrise periods begin, given that there could be as many as 20 launching every week.

For a refresher on how Clarifying Questions work, check out the latest video in our new gTLD series, featuring FairWinds Consulting Associate Jen Goldberg.

Let’s start with some numbers. On Reveal Day, we found out that 1,930 applications were submitted in total. Since then, 13 applications have been withdrawn (you can see the full list by going here and selecting “Application Status” and then “Withdrawn” from the two drop-down menus at the top of the page), leaving 1,917 applications still in play. Of those, 1,766 participated in the Draw, meaning 151 applications opted out. Like with the Draw, ICANN sorted IDNs first; after the 108 that participated in the Draw, only eight remained. That means that slots 1,775 through 1,917 are held by a combination of generic, branded and geographic, non-IDN gTLD applications.

A handful of brand owners decided to opt out of the Draw, including auto makers General Motors (.BUICK, .CADILLAC, .CHEVROLET, .CHEVY and .GMC), Ford (.FORD and .LINCOLN), and Volvo (.VOLVO) – despite the fact that competitors Audi, Volkswagen, BMW, Toyota, Nissan, Fiat and Suzuki all participated. Of the auto companies, Fiat’s application for .FIAT came out first, with draw number 155. Similarly, Estée Lauder opted out for its .CLINIQUE, .LAMER and .ORIGINS applications, whereas L’Oréal, with applications for .LANCOME and .KEIHLS, among others, opted to participate.

What was perhaps even more interesting were the companies that decided to buy into the Draw for some applications but not others. Richemont, the luxury goods manufacturer that applied for 14 strings, opted out on four applications: its two IDN strings and its applications for .WATCHES and .JEWELRY. Almost all of Richemont’s other applications are for branded terms except for one, .LOVE, which actually came out on top of Richemont’s lot, drawing number 466. .LOVE is in contention with six other applicants, whereas .WATCHES is not in direct contention and .JEWELRY only has one direct contender. One possible explanation for the split is Early Warnings: the four applications for which Richemont opted out all received Early Warnings from the GAC, which may have caused Richemont to choose to delay.

In a similar fashion, Google opted to keep nearly a quarter of its applications (24 of the 98 that remain after the company withdrew three) out of the Draw. These applications span different terms and registry models, but by far the most interesting string left out of the Draw was .SEARCH. Google will be in contention with three other applicants for the string, including Amazon. Another applicant for .SEARCH, dot Now Limited, also opted out of the Draw, while the remaining two applicants, Donuts and Amazon, drew numbers 1,179 and 1,305, respectively.

Finally, Fidelity, which seemed to be planning an aggressive new gTLD strategy by not only applying for its brand, .FIDELITY, but also industry-defining terms .IRA, .MUTUALFUNDS and .RETIREMENT, decided to opt out of the Draw for all four applications. On the other hand, none of its applications is in contention, so the company may just be taking the extra time to launch its new gTLDs.

The existing body of knowledge around new gTLDs has, thus far, lacked information about how Internet users will respond to the introduction of over 1,000 new Web extensions. In fact, there is generally a lack of information about just how many Internet users even really know that new gTLDs are coming. So FairWinds partnered with leading market research firm InsightsNow to survey over 2,000 Internet users on their levels of awareness of and attitudes toward new gTLDs. Below are some key findings from that research:

• Internet users, by and large, know nothing about new gTLDs: 74% of Internet users surveyed do not know about the New gTLD Program, and only 4% could successfully name a new gTLD.
• Internet users will initially be confused by new gTLDs and may find it difficult to navigate to content or know which new addresses to trust in the immediate future: Only 27% of users surveyed said new gTLDs would not cause confusion.
• Brand owners that effectively define their new gTLDs and rise above this confusion will achieve success with their new gTLDs: After receiving education about new gTLDs, reports of confusion dropped by 11%.
• Significant gains in terms of digital presence and online awareness of their brands await brand owners who provide consumers with simple education about new gTLDs.

So what does all this mean? Internet users have sent a clear message that not only will brand owners and other new gTLD operators be able to educate consumers and overcome confusion – they may be able to do so relatively quickly. And if brand owners can mitigate consumers’ confusion and build trust in their gTLDs, they are very likely to experience success with those gTLDs.

The full report contains additional insights for brand owners. You can download it here or on FairWinds’ website.

In other words, November wasn’t a great month for ccTLD domain names in terms of security. In addition to the .RO and .PK hacks, Network World reported that .EU gained popularity among hackers and cybercriminals as a target for attacks and other malicious activities in November as well.

Registering domain names in ccTLDs has long been a bit of a gamble for corporations. On one hand, maintaining a digital presence in key country spaces is important, but on the other hand, certain ccTLDs have a history of being vulnerable to cyber attacks, hacks, malware and other threats. Of course, some ccTLDs, like .UK, .JP and .DE are run more securely and pose much less of a risk (as we discussed in an earlier blog post), but many ccTLDs are not run in a very stable and secure manner, and therefore are vulnerable to attacks or other kinds of disruptions, causing sites to go down.

So what does all of this have to do with new gTLDs? This blog is, after all, called gTLD Strategy, not ccTLD Strategy. Well, for many brand owners, one of the perks of applying for one or more new gTLDs was the ability to potentially move away from risky, insecure ccTLDs, and instead move their international sites under their own gTLDs. So as opposed to Google.ro or Yahoo.pk, companies may opt to use Romania.Google or PK.Yahoo, which they will have much more control over in terms of security.

There is a slight obstacle: in Specification 5 of the sample Registry Agreement provided in the New gTLD Applicant Guidebook, gTLD operators are required to initially reserve two-character labels as well as country and territory names. The good news is, gTLD owners can go through an administrative procedure to release these names in order to use them once their gTLDs are up and running.

This requirement should not derail brand owners who applied for new gTLDs from working to launch their new gTLDs soon – the bottom line here is that new gTLDs offer brand owners a great opportunity to move away from the potentially vulnerable world of ccTLDs while still offering geographically specific and unique content to their consumers around the world.

Then this week, certain new gTLD applicants received another notice, not from the GAC, but from Linda Corugedo Steneberg, Director at the European Commission’s Communications Networks, Content and Technology Directorate. This letter named 28 applied-for gTLD strings (some with multiple applications) that may “raise issues of compatibility with the existing legislation and/or with policy positions and objectives of the European Union.” Some of these strings had also received Early Warnings, but there were also some new faces that popped up on the list. The letter pointed out that an application’s inclusion on the list should in no way be considered a form or representation of GAC Early Warnings, but rather a signal to applicants that they should engage in further discussions with the European Commission.

The language of the letter seems benign, but in the larger context of the relationship between sovereign governments and ICANN, the European Commission’s action is actually quite significant. Essentially, by opting out of the Early Warning process and naming its own list of potentially problematic gTLD applications, the European Commission stepped outside of and completely bypassed ICANN’s prescribed process for governments to weigh in on domain name policy matters. Instead, the European Commission brought new gTLD applications into the legal realm of legislation and policy, quietly implying that ICANN has no jurisdiction in such matters. The European Commission has sent the message that it is not within ICANN’s purview to oversee issues that impact a nation’s (or in this case, a union of nations) economy, culture, freedoms of speech and expression, or industry regulations – this power rests with the sovereign governments of those nations.

The European Commission has been vocal in its criticism of aspects of the ICANN process in the past. This latest action echoes that sentiment, and also raises issues of adjudication: if other governments follow the European Commission’s lead or even take a step further by deeming whether or not a new gTLD is allowed to exist independently of ICANN’s assessment, who holds the ultimate authority to determine the fate of the gTLD, ICANN or the government? There is a chance that the European Commission’s letter could just be the tip of the iceberg if other governments decide to follow suite.

At the very least, the European Commission’s move represents a very interesting new twist in the ongoing saga of the New gTLD Program.

To give a quick recap, the New gTLD Applicant Guidebook (section 1.1.2.4) states that the GAC may use Early Warnings to indicate that an application may be seen as potentially sensitive or problematic to governments, or that it may violate national laws. The Early Warning is only a notice, and does not have the power to effectively halt an application like GAC Advice (which, unlike Early Warnings, results from a consensus decision on the part of GAC members) does. Rather, many GAC members expressed the belief that Early Warnings are meant to open a dialogue between applicants and governments (through the relevant GAC representatives) and resolve potentially problematic issues before Advice is necessary.

With that in mind, the GAC published its Toronto Communiqué as the meeting wrapped up late last week. Most importantly, the communiqué stated that the GAC will forward Early Warnings from its members on November 20, 2012. Beginning on that date, applicants who receive Early Warnings will have the opportunity to address the issues enumerated by one or more GAC representatives. In the communiqué, the GAC also stated that individual members are considering a range of issues when it comes to issuing Early Warnings. We have included the list from the communiqué here:

• Consumer protection
• Strings that are linked to regulated market sectors, such as the financial, health and charity sectors
• Competition issues
• Strings that have broad or multiple uses or meanings, and where one entity is seeking exclusive use
• Religious terms where the applicant has no, or limited, support from the relevant religious organizations or the religious community
• Minimizing the need for defensive registrations
• Protection of geographic names
• Intellectual property rights particularly in relation to strings aimed at the distribution of music, video and other digital material
• The relationship between new gTLD applications and all applicable legislation

Also worth noting is that the GAC stated quite plainly that it expects ICANN to oversee and enforce any changes requested. The GAC advised the ICANN Board that such changes should be transformed into contractual requirements, which could raise a host of interesting issues with the Registry Agreement that all new gTLD operators must sign with ICANN.

In addition to Early Warnings, the GAC mentioned that it plans to finalize its Advice following the next Public Meeting in Beijing, China, in April 2013. In its latest proposal paper, which we discussed recently here on the blog, ICANN indicated that it will not delegate the first gTLDs until after that meeting, presumably to leave time for GAC Advice. However, we may not have to wait until April to hear more news from the GAC – the end of the communiqué says that the GAC is considering hosting an intersessional meeting before Beijing “as needed.”

Here’s how ICANN proposes this process will go (key points have been bolded):

Each application will receive a Draw Number, which will be used to schedule the release of Initial Evaluation results, pre-delegation testing, and signing the contract with ICANN. Draw Numbers will be assigned in the style of a raffle – applicants must purchase paper tickets and ICANN will draw these tickets to assign each Draw Number. For readers who remember that ICANN had dismissed similar random assignment procedures because those procedures would violate California’s anti-lottery laws, this proposal should raise eyebrows.

It turns out that ICANN got around these laws by applying for a “fundraising drawings” license. But with that license comes certain restrictions. Most notably, applicants are required to purchase their tickets, which cost $100 apiece, in person. ICANN has offered to supply proxy purchasers at no charge for applicants who cannot make the trip. While this may seem onerous, the one upside to a completely manual drawing process is that it removes much of the margin for error that was present in the Digital Archery process. The one outstanding issue? ICANN has not actually been approved for this license yet, but expects to be by the end of November.

ICANN has stated that the Draw will occur between December 4 and 15 of this year, but has not yet confirmed an exact date. As stated above, the Draw Numbers will be used to schedule the release of Initial Evaluation results, which, under this proposal, will occur at a rate of 100 applications per week between March and June 2013. ICANN has said that it will give priority to IDNs to promote diversity within the Domain Name System by releasing the Initial Evaluation results of these applications first.

Later in the year, the Draw Numbers will also be used to order pre-delegation testing and signing of the Registry Agreement (by both ICANN and the applicant). Applicants can still negotiate the Registry Agreement before they begin pre-delegation testing. They will have to reach consensus with ICANN over the terms of the Agreement, and then both parties will officially sign the Agreement after pre-delegation testing. Both pre-delegation testing and Registry Agreement signing will take place at a rate of 20 applications per week, which will allow ICANN to stay within the delegation limit of 1,000 gTLDs per year. Neither Registry Agreement signing nor delegation will begin until after ICANN’s next Public Meeting in Beijing in April.

The timeline ICANN envisions in this proposal is actually slightly altered from previous projections. Whereas common wisdom held that Initial Evaluation would wrap up in June 2013, this timeline has the results being posted as soon as March. Also, the Objection Filing Period is now scheduled to end on March 13, rather than January 12. And most importantly, the first new gTLDs will begin delegating the second quarter of 2013, rather than the third quarter.

ICANN has opened up a Public Comment Forum for this proposal, and it will undoubtedly be a hot topic of conversation during next week’s Public Meeting in Toronto. Members of the FairWinds staff will be attending, and we will be providing regular updates here and on Twitter @FairWinds, so be sure to check back often.

This is the sign outside of Currys, a UK-based purveyor of electronics with stores all over England and Ireland. Brits likely know that they can find Currys online at Currys.co.uk, but anyone who has perused ICANN’s published list of new gTLD applications knows that Donuts, Inc. submitted an applications for .DIGITAL. That means that in another year or so, Currys.Digital could be a viable new domain name. We first discussed this concept on FairWinds’ Domain Name Strategy blog about two years ago, when Sony was promoting its Make.Believe campaign (pronounced “make-dot-believe”). Back then, we speculated that if and when a flood of new gTLDs entered the market, users may begin to interpret that tagline as a domain name, and that such an interpretation could lead to serious confusion on the part of Internet users.

The Currys.Digital example drags that speculation back to the forefront now that we have a rough idea of which extensions actually will become new gTLDs. Donuts was the only applicant to apply for .DIGITAL, and given the company’s high buy-in to the New gTLD Program (307 applications submitted), odds are we’ll see the .DIGITAL application come to fruition. In that case, it will be possible for the shop in the picture to go out and register the domain name Currys.Digital – but just because something is possible doesn’t necessarily mean it will happen.

Consider a scenario where Currys does not register its eponymous .DIGITAL domain name, but Boots, the well-known, UK-based pharmacy and drug store chain, applied for the .BOOTS gTLD. Imagine you’re a consumer and an average Internet user, walking down this street in London, and you see the sign that displays “Currys.Digital.” Then, a short block later, you see a sign in the window of Boots that reads, “Visit us online at our new site: Pharmacy.Boots.” Further up the road, there is another retailer whose name is SportsDirect.com.

So which of these is a domain name and which is not? How is the average Internet user, who beginning in mid-2013 is likely to be bombarded with marketing about new gTLD domains, supposed to be able to remember which is a viable domain name and which is not, when the number of available endings increases from 22 to over 1,000?

The key takeaway for brand owners here is that brands who applied for new gTLDs are going to have a bit of an uphill battle ahead of them to make sure that their customers and other Internet users are aware of their new gTLDs and that they navigate to them. But brand owners, who generally have a) a pre-existing customer base, and b) substantial marketing budgets and access to a wealth of marketing channels, have a leg up over entrepreneurial gTLD applicants whose budgets may be much tighter and whose audience base (the wide world of potential domain name registrants) is much more nebulous, and therefore, harder to target when it comes to marketing communications.

Oh, and whoever is in charge of Currys domain name portfolio should consider snapping up Currys.Digital during the .DIGITAL Sunrise period.

What ICANN also mentioned during the August 9 webinar was that at least 90 percent of all new gTLD applicants will receive at least one CQ when the official questions are posed later this fall and winter. The majority of these questions will focus on the financial portion of the new gTLD application responses, in particular the Letter of Credit that many applicants submitted as proof of a Continued Operations Instrument (the stop-gap measure ICANN designed to continue registry operations in the event that a new gTLD operator goes belly-up).

Specifically, we’ve received indications that the CQs regarding the Letters of Credit will likely request an amendment that provides ICANN with unconditional entitlement to the funds named therein. While this may present a logistical headache to some applicants, especially those representing major corporations, in the grand scheme of things, having to tweak their Letters of Credit is the least of applicants’ worries.

Having worked with dozens of new gTLD applicants, a handful of our clients were selected to participate in the CQ Pilot program. Those clients that were selected generally only received a very limited number of questions (one to two) that focused on their Letters of Credit. But many other companies with whom we are in contact have let us know that they received many more than one or two questions, about various aspects of their financial responses as well as other parts of their applications.

Hearing this feedback raised some serious red flags for us. While the New gTLD Program is, in many ways, a brand new process, from our experience working with ICANN on past gTLD launches, receiving multiple requests for clarity or additional information from ICANN is not a very good sign. In fact, it could signal some major issues with the application itself. If applicants do not successfully answer ICANN’s CQs in a way that satisfies the new gTLD evaluators, there is a good chance that their applications will end up in Extended Evaluation. At best, this will delay the launch of their gTLDs; at worst, it could result in the application failing completely.

As mentioned, the real CQs will not be issued for some time yet – when exactly still remains to be seen. But in the meantime, it will be advisable for applicants to begin discussing their likelihood of receiving multiple CQs and their subsequent options with their application services providers. And if any applicants feel less than confident in the way their applications were prepared, now is the time to seek out a new partner to help navigate the potential pitfalls of this next phase of gTLD evaluation.

Specifically, we are referring to the costs that all businesses will incur in order to protect and promote their brands and trademarks in new gTLDs. When it comes to protection, many businesses are familiar with the process of Sunrise registrations. As we described in our “Clearing Up Clearinghouse Confusion” post, new gTLD Sunrise periods will function similarly, but with brand owners only having to register their trademark once, in the Trademark Clearinghouse, rather than with each individual registry.

In addition to the costs for registering domains during Sunrise periods, brand owners will also need to defensively register permutations of their brands and trademarks at the second level in new gTLDs, including misspellings (think Aiddas of Addidas for Adidas) or combinations of brands with generic terms (think AdidasSoccer). This will involve paying a fee to register those names across certain gTLDs initially, as well as another fee to renew those registrations regularly, generally once a year. Now, certain gTLD applicants are planning to include additional Rights Protection Mechanisms like a Domain Protected Marks List (DPML), which would block these kinds of permutations from being registered by third parties. For those registries with a DPML, brand owners would not have to pay the recurring renewal fee for marks they block under the DPML.

In addition to purely protecting their brands and trademarks from cybersquatters, many businesses will also want to register certain second-level domains in select extensions for proactive reasons, such as to reach a different online audience or expand into a new market. In that case, they would pay to register the domains once and then pay an annual renewal fee.

So now that we’ve gone through a few of the options businesses will need to pursue, what do the actual costs look like? For the sake of simplicity, say 100 new gTLDs launch with no DMPL or other enhanced Rights Protection Mechanisms. Let’s say that Company X owns 10 trademarks. Based on past launches, FairWinds estimates that Sunrise registrations will cost approximately $200 apiece. For 10 trademarks across 100 gTLDs, the total cost for Sunrise registrations will be $200,000.

Additionally, assume that Company X also wants to protect five permutations or misspellings per trademark. By our estimates, registrations in new gTLDs will likely cost an average of $20. That’s another $1,000 per gTLD, or another $100,000 total when gTLDs first launch, and then every year after that for the life of the registry.

Now assume that of those 100 new gTLDs, 10 are especially relevant to Company X’s business model, so in addition to the five permutations of its 10 trademarks, Company X wants to register another 20 combinations of its brands and generic terms. That equals an additional $40,000 per year.

In total, Company X’s costs are $340,000 in the first year, plus another $140,000 per year in renewal fees.

Now, consider the fact that many more than 100 new gTLDs will launch beginning next year. Excluding applications for restricted gTLDs, as many as 550 “open,” or unrestricted new gTLDs could be approved and launch starting in 2013. Some of these will include a DPML or other options like a perpetual block (first introduced by ICM Registry during the launch of .XXX), but many may not.

Of course, it takes a much more detailed process to develop an accurate brand promotion and protection budget for new gTLDs, but it is clear that all businesses – both those that applied for new gTLDs and those that did not – are going to have to make a significant investment to stay ahead of cybersquatters once new gTLDs begin to go live.

“ICANN’s role is very limited, and it is not responsible for many issues associated with the Internet, such as financial transactions, Internet content control, spam (unsolicited commercial email), Internet gambling, or data protection and privacy.”

This delineation of what exactly it is that ICANN is responsible for and what it is not was stated again by its interim CEO Akram Atallah in a recent Reuters article about the deluge of public comments ICANN has received over who should operate certain religious gTLDs that were applied for as part of the New gTLD Program, namely .BIBLE, .ISLAM and others. While certain comments implore ICANN to make sure that these names do not fall into the “wrong” hands, Atallah told Reuters, “We don’t look into whether the Vatican has the right to the .CATHOLIC name. Hopefully, the process will get to a conclusion that is satisfying to the majority.”

In other words, ICANN isn’t in the business of evaluating whether an applicant is “worthy” of operating a specific gTLD, but rather in evaluating whether or not that applicant sufficiently met all of the evaluation criteria laid out in the New gTLD Applicant Guidebook.

Regardless of what that means for the communities who are concerned about the operation of gTLDs with religious significance, this policy has interesting implications for companies that applied for generic-term gTLDs. The new gTLD evaluation process is not meant to determine whether Google has the “right” to operate .SEARCH or if Fidelity “should” operate .RETIREMENT, for example. ICANN does not have the power to subjectively make those decisions.

So at the end of the day, who gets to operate .HEALTH will come down to who is most successful at navigating ICANN’s evaluation process and Contention Set procedures. And for those terms for which only one application was filed, like .WORK, for example, the decision over whether to give the applicant control over the gTLD will have to do with its capabilities as expressed in its application, rather than a subjective measure of worthiness.

On August 14, 2012, a Federal Court in California denied most of ICANN’s motion to dismiss an antitrust case that was brought against it and ICM Registry (the operator of .XXX) by a plaintiff who owns some of the most popular adult entertainment websites in the world. Some have speculated that this could signal trouble for the entire New gTLD Program and leave both ICANN and new gTLD applicants open to further lawsuits. However, a careful analysis of the decision reveals facts that, if proven at trial, may make this decision applicable only to the unique situation of the .XXX domain and limit its impact on the New gTLD Program, or at least render it only partially relevant to new gTLD applicants.

From the very beginning, observers must take the facts discussed in the Court’s decision with a grain of salt. Under established court procedures, all of the Plaintiffs’ factual allegations must be accepted as true for the limited purposes of the Defendants’ motion for summary judgment – regardless of whether there is proof to support them. In the Manwin case, the Plaintiffs allege that the Defendants harmed competition in the market for .XXX gTLD registry services by suppressing or eliminating competing bids for the original .XXX gTLD registry contract and any renewals of that contract. They claim the resulting no-bid contract contains unfavorable prices and sales terms that Plaintiffs allege would not exist in a competitive market. Plaintiffs further allege that ICM mounted a coercive campaign to force ICANN to approve the .XXX gTLD and award the registry contract to ICM. This campaign allegedly included false statements and misrepresented the claimed interest from both the public and the adult entertainment industry in establishing a .XXX gTLD.

To establish a claim under Section 2 of the Sherman Act, a plaintiff must show that the defendant has monopoly power in a relevant market, and that its predatory conduct has caused antitrust injury. Since it is required that a plaintiff prove defendant’s monopoly power in a relevant market, defining just what that market is becomes critical. In the Manwin case, the two “markets” which Plaintiffs assert are 1) the market for affirmative domain registrations (where the owner actually uses the domain for its business) and 2) the market for defensive domain registrations (where the owner merely wants to prevent someone else from owning a domain that incorporates their brand).

In finding that no monopoly power exists for the affirmative domain market, the Court stated that:

“Plaintiffs have not alleged why other currently operating TLDs are not reasonable substitutes to the .XXX TLD for hosting adult entertainment websites. To the contrary, Plaintiffs allege that Manwin’s own website YouPorn.com is the most popular free adult video website on the internet. The .com TLD is an adequate economic substitute for an adult content website registered in the .XXX.”

However, in addressing the defensive domain market, the Court found that monopoly power may exist and that the Plaintiffs’ antitrust claims, which are based on that defensive market, may proceed. This is due to the fact that “[t]here is no reasonable substitute for these defensive registration services, because the only way to block a name in the .XXX TLD is to register a name in the .XXX TLD.”

Since the only way to block a name in any gTLD is to register or otherwise eliminate that name in the gTLD itself, the Court’s finding on this relevant market monopoly will likely apply to all new gTLD registries. This is what has caused some to speculate that the Manwin case might be the first shot in a prolonged war against ICANN and new gTLD Registry Operators. However, it is important to remember that suits filed under the Sherman Act are also required to prove antitrust injury. In denying ICM and ICANN’s motion to dismiss the complaint, the Court relied on Plaintiffs’ claims that the .XXX Registry Agreement was not subjected to free competition but was coerced by ICM; that there are no limits on the prices ICM can charge for .XXX domains; and that when the agreement expires in 10 years, ICANN is obligated to negotiate its renewal with ICM, thus preventing other registries from seeking to manage the .XXX gTLD.

So this leads to the big question of whether there has been, or will be any anticompetitive behavior by ICANN or applicants in the current New gTLD Program. While the process had a high bar to entry – in the form of a $185,000 application fee and extensive background checks – it has been open to all on the same terms. Assuming that ICANN treats all applicants equally and does not conduct any back-room deals to stifle competition through the Registry Agreement negotiation process, its handling of contention sets, auctions, and the various gTLD dispute processes, one could argue that the inevitable monopolies in defensive domain markets are permitted and do not run afoul of the Sherman Act. As such, whatever decision results in the Manwin case may be strictly limited to the unique situation of the .XXX gTLD and may amount to much ado about nothing for new gTLD applicants. Of course, if new Registry Operators wish to avoid the monopoly question altogether, they could consider something novel like offering free defensive registrations to brand owners.

In any event, this case may be a wake-up call to ICANN. The cost of defending the dispute, alone, may lead to a realization that it needs to tread more carefully in future negotiations and approvals, implement improved ethics and conflicts of interest policies, and pay more attention to the voices of its constituents who may not be providing the most revenue to the organization but who could amplify their voices through use of the courts.

Readers will remember from our earlier post, “Weighing in on Batching,” that FairWinds submitted a proposed solution during ICANN’s recently closed public comment window that followed the accounting principle, First In, First Out, or FIFO. Essentially, our solution relies on natural speed bumps and roadblocks in the new gTLD application evaluation process and puts more control in the hands of new gTLD applicants, rather than in ICANN to establish subjective delays. You can read more about our proposed solution in the post.

But what did others have to say about the batching/metering issue? Well, to begin with, any agreement on whether ICANN should release all the results of Initial Evaluation (IE) at once or on a rolling basis still remains elusive. Certain larger applicants like Donuts, which applied for 307 gTLDs, and Uniregistry, which applied for around 50, are opposed to ICANN holding the IE results, where others, including the recently formed New TLD Applicant Group, a division of Observers in ICANN’s Registries Stakeholder Group, was unable to reach consensus on the matter.

Unsurprisingly, applicants for multiple strings tended to favor a solution that would allow them to rank their own applications based on their priorities of which should launch first. And a handful of applicants from across the spectrum proposed allowing IDN and community-based applications to proceed through evaluation to delegation first, including one group that co-signed a letter – signatories ranged from entrepreneurial applicants to Google. Not all comments submitted shared that point of view, however.

Like with many other public comments ICANN has solicited for policies in the past, agreement on many aspects of batching/metering/sequencing seems a long way off. According to the recently posted New gTLD Roadmap, ICANN seems to be in no rush but rather more concerned with getting it right this time: the organization does not plan to have a final solution prepared for implementation until December at the earliest. This timeline undoubtedly raises concerns among certain applicants, who made it clear that they expect for ICANN to be completely finished with IE by the first quarter of 2012.

Based on the Roadmap, it is unlikely that ICANN will have much new to say on the subject of batching/metering/sequencing during Thursday’s webinar, but hopefully the organization continues to provide updates in the form of webinars and published announcements on its new gTLD microsite. Because after all, one of the biggest areas of agreement among applicants who submitted comments on this issue was that ICANN needs to be much more transparent in all of its processes.

Now, we have no way of knowing exactly how the Gipper would have felt about the Reagan.com homepage’s claims that “some of the largest free email providers are profiting from the information they glean from your emails” as a pitch for the company’s offerings. But what we do know is that Reagan.com may be leading a trend that could take off once new gTLDs begin to launch – “branded” emails.

Imagine you’re a brand owner who wants to use your new gTLD to build (or augment) a digital community of fans and advocates of your brand. One tool in your new arsenal is to offer them their very own email address with your brand included: CustomerName@Mail.BMW or CustomerName@Love.Subaru, as examples. Even operators of generic-term gTLDs could have a potential product to offer. Can you think of a single frat boy who wouldn’t jump at the chance to have his email address be Username@Drink.Beer, for instance?

In an age where conventional free email providers collect all kinds of information, from the last place you made an online purchase to where in the world you logged in from, a service that promises not to scan your emails could be a very attractive proposition to Internet users. Add to that the ability to express their interests, likes, or brand affiliations with a new gTLD domain, and you’ve got a new product with the potential to appeal to users across party lines.

This type of scam is called phishing, and it’s become something of a scourge for the Banking and Financial Services industries. It’s also one of the reasons the American Bankers Association (ABA) and the Financial Services Roundtable (FSR) submitted an application for the .BANK gTLD.

In an interview with BankInfoSecurity, the ABA’s Doug Johnson, who is responsible for overseeing risk management policy for the organization, points out that not only will the ABA and FSR be able to control who can register a domain name in .BANK, but the applicants also developed a set of 31 security standards, including higher levels of authentication, that they recommended ICANN require all financial-related gTLDs to follow. These two factors are designed to minimize the occurrence of phishing on domains in the .BANK gTLD, which cost the Financial industry approximately $2.5 billion in losses last year. In time, Johnson argues, consumers will learn to place greater trust in .BANK domains than in other, less strictly regulated domains.

In a recent Wall Street Journal article, FairWinds’ co-founder Josh Bourne agrees that if financial companies put in the effort to communicate to customers that new gTLD domains – whether they end in .BANK or .BARCLAYS, for example – are the best and most secure places to access their accounts, banking information, and other financial content, then users will in fact learn to trust those domains more than others. When it comes to navigating the Web, if an Internet user ends up on a site with an unfamiliar domain, he or she can err on the side of getting out of there.

But that doesn’t mean that the gTLDs themselves will be a panacea to the phishing problem. While the domains themselves can provide customers with “a tool that they know is proof positive that is their bank,” as Josh put it, the companies themselves (and in the case of .BANK, the ABA and FSR) will also have to do some legwork to ensure that users know the tool is out there for them to utilize. And it’s also important that these companies remember that any email address, regardless of the domain, can be spoofed. So even in the new gTLD future, Internet users must still be vigilant when scrutinizing emails that appear to come from banks.

It is worth noting that another organization, Dotsecure Inc., has also submitted an application for .BANK. The ABA and FSR’s application is community-based, though, meaning that unless they fail to meet the community requirements, they will likely beat out Dotsecure Inc. for this gTLD.

Having worked with over 50 companies to prepare their new gTLD applications, and as new gTLD applicants ourselves (for .FAIRWINDS), we set our minds to coming up with our own solution for how ICANN should deal with this issue. We considered a variety of options: ICANN could simply let the natural delays inherent in the application evaluation process (Contention Sets, Extended Evaluation, etc.) basically “batch” the applications organically. Or, ICANN could release the results of Initial Evaluation on a rolling basis, thus letting applications move toward delegation on a rolling basis. Or, ICANN could prioritize applications for community-based gTLDs and IDNs (new gTLDs in non-Latin characters) above standard applications, of which there are just 116.

Unfortunately, each of these options raised almost as many issues as they resolved. So after a great deal more thought, and close consideration with 28 clients who participated on a special conference call to discuss the matter, we ultimately arrived at what we believe is an effective but equitable solution for most applicants. We dubbed our process FIFO after the accounting principle: First In, First Out.

You can read the full comment that we submitted to ICANN here, but our FIFO plan consists of a few key elements that ensure greater transparency and fairness:

• First, all results of Initial Evaluation should be posted at once.
• Any applications that must proceed to Extended Evaluation or Contention Sets, or must deal with Objections, should do so.
• All other applications should proceed to the Registry Agreement negotiation phase. As applicants return their signed Agreements, ICANN should process the Agreements and pass applicants on to pre-delegation testing on a FIFO basis.
• Once applicants have passed all pre-delegation tests, their applications will be inserted into a queue for delegation, again on a FIFO basis.
• Finally, ICANN should establish a portal that tracks the progress of all applications through the pre-delegation process so that the community may see where each new gTLD stands.

The process itself is fairly straightforward and takes advantage of the natural ebbs and flows of the application evaluation process. This is key because, as we have written previously here on the blog, there are technical limitations to how rapidly ICANN can delegate gTLDs into the root zone – the current wisdom is that no more than 1,000 gTLDs may be inserted into the root within a year.

A key component of this approach is that it puts control in the hands of applicants. If applicants want to delegate their gTLDs early, they must be willing to be more flexible in negotiating their Registry Agreements with ICANN. If they prefer to wait to delegate their gTLDs later, they don’t have to rush the negotiation of their Agreements. But perhaps more important than putting the control in the hands of applicants, we emphasize a great deal of transparency on ICANN’s part throughout the whole process. In addition to posting all the results of Initial Evaluation in a public forum, we also encourage ICANN to open a public comment period to discuss the current Registry Agreement, and we believe many aspects of it should change in light of the scale of the New gTLD Program as well as the diversity of applicants.

We submitted our comment to ICANN over the weekend, and according to the recent “Roadmap” that ICANN posted on the new gTLD site, a solution should be finalized later this year, most likely after the Public Meeting in Toronto. We’re looking forward to continuing to participate in this process and encourage our clients and readers to do the same.