Thursday, August 9, 2012

New gTLD Program Update: start of Initial Evaluation

The PDF presentation of the Webinar can be downloaded here.

Agenda included:

  • Status (dates):
  • Communications;
  • Evaluations Underway;
  • Initial Evaluation;
  • Early Observations & Clarification Questions;
  • Metering / Batching (dates);
  • Key Dates (dates).

More on the ICANN web site.

Video about .post new gTLD recently launched

More Wine new gTLDs Public Comments (23)

Many public comments for both ".wine" and ".vin" domain name extensions were published these last days, subjects of public comments were:
  • Rights Protection Mechanisms;
  • Avoiding bad faith registrations;
  • Objection statement;
  • Geographical indication in wine sector;
  • عدم السماح بتسجيل هذا الاسم.
Some comments are the same "copy-paste" for different applicants.

Panels and objections grounds are:
  • Registry Services Evaluation Panel;
  • String Similarity Evaluation Panel;
  • String Confusion Objection Ground;
  • Geographic Names Evaluation Panel;
  • Community Evaluation Panel.
Affiliations of entities publishing these comments are:
  • Prudential Financial, Inc.;
  • TIFFANY & CO.;
  • AIM - European Brands Association;
  • H.J. Heinz;
  • Public TLD;
  • International Organisation of Vine and Wine;
  • Self;
  • Sunkist Growers, Inc.
Most of these comments are not made to protect the wine universe and most are general: I mean they could have been submitted for any string.

One is interesting, it tries to defend an existing .WINE string in an Alternative DNS root. Unfortunately, an interesting comment addressed to the "Community Evaluation Panel" is in a language I cannot read but should probably be taken into account by panelists*.

The one addressed to the "Geographic Names Evaluation Panel" and which is entitled "Geographical indication in wine sector" is written by The International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV). This organization, based in Paris, is also an intergovernmental organisation (www.oiv.int) directly affiliated to a strong wine community worldwide: it represents 44 Member states (Australia, France, South Africa...) and has many observers.
It is possible panelists consider this comment.

To read .wine public comments, you should go to here, "search by string" and enter "wine", then click on "Go": the list will appear.

* I finally translated it with Google Translate and for what I read, all I can add is "no comment".

.BRAND new gTLD Reports are updated once a month: CLICK HERE !