ICANN’s new gTLD global consultation program:

With applications for many new generic top-level domains expected to be launched in early 2010, and following ICANN’s 35th meeting in Sydney last month, ICANN hosted a series of global consultation outreach events in New York and London to further explain the programme, share the progress that it has been made to-date, and receive feedback from the internet community.

On 29 May 2009, ICANN’s Implementation Recommendation Team (IRT) posted its Final Report on trade mark protection in new gTLDs . This report will be posted for a thirty (30) day comment period which will close on 29 June 2009.

In the process of developing its recommendations, the IRT consulted with WIPO and the broader community, and evaluated the public comments received in response to the posting of the initial Draft IRT Report.

As a key player in the global domain name management and brand protection industry, NetNames has responded to ICANN’s call for public comments on the plans to protect trade mark owners within the proposed new generic top level domain names.  The draft report from ICANN's implementation reccommendation team (IRT) report was issued on 24 April 2009. 

ICANN is firmly committed to implementing its new top level domain name (gTLD) program.  However, there are four “Overarching Issues" that have been specifically identified by ICANN as needing to be dealt with as follows:

•  Trade mark protection 
•  TLD demand and economic analysis 
• Security and stability: root zone scaling 
• Potential for malicious conduct

ICANN issued its second draft of the new gTLD Draft Applicant Guidebook on 19 February 2009.
You can see this draft by visiting the link: http://www.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/draft-rfp-clean-18feb09-en.pdf.

Before the second draft of the Guidebook was published, ICANN requested feedback about the contents of the first Guidebook. Many of the comments received then led to revisions which are now included in the latest Guidebook draft.

Throughout the webinar, the hosts (Jonathan Robinson, COO of NetNames, and Rob Coghill, Product Manager, Registry Relations of NetNames) spoke about the latest developments in ICANN’s implementation plan for the new gTLDs.

The COO of NetNames (Jonathan Robinson) will be attending the meeting to take part in the discussions and to collect valuable information that we’d like to share with you in a webinar titled ‘The New gTLDS – the Latest News and Developments’.

The second draft has taken account of the substantial feedback received by ICANN through the initial public comment process and is itself subject to a public comment process, scheduled to run from 18 February 2009 to 13 April 2009.
Feedback on the first draft was comprehensive and wide ranging. A number of key themes emerged and the second draft aims to respond to these as well as to clarify the language used and expand on key concepts.

The conference will cover a number of ICANN updates including plans to fast track the implementation of international character domain names (IDNs), the transparency and accountability of ICANN, DNS security issues, and eCrime. However the main topic of conversation will be about the introduction of the new gTLDs.

If you wish to watch the video it can be found at: http://www.icann.org/video/. It is also visible on the ICANN blog: http://blog.icann.org/2009/02/video-update-to-theapplicant-guidebook-process/.

In brief the video talks about the current process for introducing the new gTLDs, as well as the outcome of any feedback that ICANN received during the public comment period which followed the publication of the draft Applicant Guidebook.

29 January 2009, London – Brand monitoring and domain name management experts, NetNames, today launches ImageFlare, a tool to capture misrepresentations of corporate logos online.  In response to the rapid growth of cybercrime and logo abuse, ImageFlare offers customers and prospects valuable and manageable insight into infringements against their logos, so that companies can deal with the most severe cases effectively.

29 January 2009, London – Brand monitoring and domain name management experts, NetNames, today launches ImageFlare, a tool to capture misrepresentations of corporate logos online.  In response to the rapid growth of cybercrime and logo abuse, ImageFlare offers customers and prospects valuable and manageable insight into infringements against their logos, so that companies can deal with the most severe cases effectively.