New gTLD Name Applications Revealed

14-Jun-2012

New gTLD Name Applications Revealed, AGIP Urges TM and Brand Owners to Check them for Similarity

MARINA DEL REY, CA – Abu-Ghazaleh Intellectual Property (AGIP) would like to inform its clients that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) on June 13, 2012 revealed who has applied for which generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) names in what is expected to become the largest expansion in the history of the Internet’s Domain Name System.
A total of 1,930 new gTLD applications were received during the application period of the new generic Top-Level Domain program, 643 among them represent brands.
ICANN Senior Vice President Kurt Pritz noted that the applications will now be subject to a public comment and objection period, and a rigorous, objective and independent evaluation system.
"A 60-day comment period begins today, allowing anyone in the world to submit comments on any application, and the evaluation panels will consider them," said Pritz. "If anyone objects to an application and believes they have the grounds to do so, they can file a formal objection to the application. And they will have seven months to do that."
Of the 1,930 applications received:
• 66 are geographic name applications.
• 116 applications are for Internationalized Domain Names, or IDNs, for strings in scripts such as Arabic, Chinese, and Cyrillic.
Applications were received from 60 countries and territories, broken down by ICANN’s geographic regions;
• 911 from North America.
• 675 from Europe.
• 303 are from Asia-Pacific.
• 24 from Latin America and the Caribbean.
• 17 from Africa.
Applications from Latin America/Caribbean and Africa would be the first gTLDs ever from those regions.

ICANN will start evaluating the applications in batches: 500 in the first batch and 400 in subsequent batches. Placement in batches will be determined by batching preference, secondary timestamp score, geographic location, and contention among identical and "similar" applications.

The full list of the new applications can be found on this URL: http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/program-status/application-results/strings-1200utc-13jun12-en

AGIP advises all to check them to see in case any new requested gTLD is similar to their brand or trademark.

For more information, kindly email us at: agip@agip.com