Friday, September 6, 2013

.CAM: "the process in the applicant guidebook is now clear"

The message below, from Famous Four Media, explains why United TLD's .CAM application cannot proceed:
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"As you know, in the last few weeks three string confusion objections lodged by Verisign, Inc against .CAM were decided: two by one panellist who decided in favour of AC Webconnecting BV and our applicant, dot Agency Limited, and one by another panellist who decided in favour of Verisign.

As you rightly pointed out in your article of 20th August, the panellists both put some emphasis on expected “usage” (i.e. the focus of the likely content of websites on the string). Whether or not one ascribes to the view that usage should not be taken into account, and we believe that it should (otherwise we would not have argued it), the fact is that United TLD were very explicit prior to the publication that usage should indeed be taken into account. In fact, Greenberg Traurig, on behalf of United TLD, vociferously opposed consolidation of all three objections, and I attach a copy of the letter for you. Note the following extract:

Consolidation has the potential to prejudice the Applicants if all Applicants’ arguments are evaluated collectively, without regard to each Applicant’s unique plan for the .cam gTLD and their arguments articulating why such plans would not cause confusion.

United TLD took a calculated risk in believing that its application was in a stronger position to win out against the objections alone rather than consolidating with the other applicants, and they lost.

As you know, Statton Hammock later went on record on CircleID and wrote the following:

String confusion objections are meant to be applicant agnostic and have nothing to do with the registration or use of the new gTLD.

Their opposition to consolidation is another reason for you to be confused by his statement.

The process in the applicant guidebook is now clear: AC Webconnecting and dot Agency Limited proceed to resolve the contention set, and United TLD ‘s application cannot proceed".
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See Circle ID blog post for reference:
http://www.circleid.com/posts/20130820_icann_must_now_decide_string_similarity_question/

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