1 December 2010TrademarksBen Anderson

.Brand of opportunities

Generic top level domains (gTLDs) are the domain suffixes with an extension of three or more characters. They are part of the structure that forms the Internet’s global addressing system, or domain-name system (DNS), and are used to route traffic through the Internet.

In total, there are now 21 gTLDs. These are made up of the original eight: .com, .edu, .gov, .int, .mil, .net, .org and .arpa. Then a further seven were approved in 2000: .aero, .biz, .coop, .info, .museum, .name and .pro. Finally, in 2004, there was an addition of six gTLDs: .asia, .cat, .jobs, .mobi, .tel and .travel.

.Brand—the basics

A ‘.brand’ relates to one part of the new gTLD programme; the introduction of brand owners or organisations being able to manage their own name as a top level domain (TLD) name. This essentially means creating a domain suffix so that the brand name appears after the dot, therefore being .brand, as opposed to a domain name registration where the brand name appears before the dot, e.g. brand.com.

It is expected that there will also be opportunities for community or geographic TLDs such as .paris or .tennis to be created.

There are three options available:

  1. .brand required for internal use only (internal departments, employees, etc.), therefore not a commercial registry
  2. .brand used by third parties—communitybased TLDs for industries, collective groups or organisations looking to use it for internal departments, affiliations, approved retailers, etc.
  3. .community or .geography used by third parties—open TLDs, operated as full commercial registries.

To apply to register a .brand, the applicant must be an established corporation, organisation or institution in good standing.

It should be reiterated that an applicant for a .brand TLD is applying to create and operate a registry business and sign a contract with ICANN.

“A ‘.brand’ relates to one part of the new gTLD programme; the introduction of brand owners or organisations being able to manage their own name as a top level domain (TLD) name.”

All applications will have to meet the objective criteria that will be set out in the applicant guidebook, which is still being finalised. For an application to be successful, it will be essential for the applicant to demonstrate that it has the strong technical and financial capability that is required to run a registry as well as making the commitment to comply with contractual requirements.

It will be possible for a .brand owner to partner with an established registrar and registry-backed operator to meet the technical capabilities required.

Should an applicant not apply in the first round for a .brand TLD, there will be further opportunities in the future. ICANN has indicated that it will announce the timings of future rounds at the same time as announcing the timescales for the first round of applications.

Branding costs

The proposed evaluation fee is $185,000 and is required from all applicants.

The evaluation fee will be payable in the form of a $5,000 deposit submitted at registration and a payment of the balance submitted with the application. ICANN will not begin its evaluation of an application unless it has received the full gTLD evaluation fee by the date and time set out in the final applicant guidebook.

The evaluation fee is set so as to recover all costs associated with the new gTLD programme, and to ensure that the programme is fully funded and revenue-neutral, and is not subsidised by existing contributions from any of ICANN’s funding sources, including generic TLD registries and registrars, ccTLD contributions and RIR contributions.

It should also be noted that there are ongoing fees connected with running a registry for a .brand TLD. As part of the registry agreement with ICANN, there will be two fees. At this stage, ICANN anticipates these fees will be:

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