« Reporting from the ICANN Meeting in San Juan, Puerto-Rico) Alongside the usual T-shirt, ICANN attendees had an even nicer surprise in their bags: the full – and final – .ASIA Calendar! The document is quite useful for one who wants to get ready to protect its portfolio in Asia. For brand owners, the key date is October 9th for the very beginning of the so-called Sunrise Period (for marks registered before March 16, 2004).The landrush were similar requests for non trademarks could result in an auction is now scheduled for the month of February next year, right after Chinese New Year.Yet, a lot is still unknown about the extension to this day. For example, the validation agent – that will determine whether or not a trademark is valid for the Sunrise on October 9th – is still not chosen, and the technical aspects of the Registry – backed by .info’s Afilias – are still rather vague. DomaiNews shall have more tomorrow after the dedicated presentation that has yet to be made to the Registrar community! »

Sourec DomainNews

« (Reporting from the ICANN Meeting in San Juan, Puerto-Rico). When PIR, the .Org Registry asked for an amendment to its contract with ICANN, the decision was met with little fanfare.

Nevertheless, the Registry’s decision to charge a five 5 cents deletion fee per domain to Registrars who would delete more than 90% of the domains registered in a month can be seen as some kind of Domainer Tax and was highly talked about this week in the ICANN corridors.

Indeed, when thousands of domains are tasted per month, a mere 5 cents can represent a lot of money in the end. From what we have heard, as far as PIR is concerned, the amendment, implemented a month ago, is already deemed successful as it is responsible for quite a dramatic down in domain names deletion.

While the Registry is currently happy with the outcome, it could move the threshold from 90% to a lesser number to make an even stronger deterent to Tasting. A solution that other gTLDs are reportedly looking into, with the strong backing of the Intellectual Property Constituency.  »

Source DomainNews