The Basics of Domain Names for Your Business

o stay competitive businesses have to have an online presence. But if you aren’t web savvy, navigating all the ins and outs of creating a website can be confusing. How do you choose a domain name? What must you do to maintain it? And what happens if your domain name expires? We spoke with Paul McGrady, a trademark and domain name lawyer in Winston & Strawn LLP’s Chicago office about what business owners can do to keep their sites running smoothly, here’s his advice: adapted from news.terra

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U.S. Department of Commerce not supporting USPS objection to .mail top level domains

Last week I wrote about how the United States Postal Service filed objections to all of the top level domain applications for .mail. It’s a big waste of money, as in order to prevail the USPS would have to show it has some sort of legal rights to the term “mail”. ICANN just published a letter from Lawrence Strickling, Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information at the U.S. Department of Commerce, saying that it does not support the objections: Adapted from domainnamewire

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Beauty companies in the rat race for new domain extensions

Due to the saturation of the number of registered domain names and to better organise the Internet, ICANN [1] has decided to create three new types of extensions (actually, top level domain or TLD): “geographical” extensions (paris, .london…); “generic” extensions corresponding to trademarks (.brand); “generic” extensions corresponding to a field of activity (eg .beauty, .book …). Adapted from premiumbeautynews

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ICANN SARP: 3 new gTLD Applicants submit application for financial assistance

Today, ICANN is publishing the New gTLD Applicant Support Program results identified by the Support Application Review Panel (SARP) for applications that have requested for financial assistance. There were three financial assistance requests submitted to ICANN by applicants to the New gTLD Program. Each of these requests were carefully considered and extensively reviewed against the criteria outlined in the New gTLD Financial Assistance Handbook. Below lists the three applications that have submitted for financial assistance, and includes the SARP determination for meeting the minimum criteria for financial assistance: Per the…

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THE OBJECTIONS FILED BY THE INDEPENDENT OBJECTOR

On 12 March 2013, the Independent Objector (IO) has lodged 24 objections against new applied-for gTLDs before the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). Acting solely in the best interests of the public who use the global internet, in full independence and impartiality, the IO is limited to filing objections on the grounds of Limited Public Interest and Community.  Following his exchanges with some applicants for new gTLDs, as part of the Initial Notice Procedure, he remained convinced that, for some applications, an objection was still warranted on the Limited Public…

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Amazon pushes for cloud dominance; will ICANN give in?

Amazon is on a land grab mission. Is the industry going to sit back and let it call the shots over the .cloud domain? The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has many roles; coordination of Internet Protocol address space and the management of the Top-Level Domain (TLD) name space amongst them. If one application that falls within the latter remit gets the go ahead, ICANN might yet end up being best known as the organisation that sold the cloud to Amazon. source

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African Union Cybersquatting a Continental Top Level Domain “.africa”

Africa has made the news once again, in the technology sector and as the most attractive continent in the world in terms of technology and business. It’s clearly the next emerging market with top tech and blue chip firms jostling to set up regional head quarters. In the technology frontier and especially the internet and domain related businesses, Africa is smack in the center of a simmering row between two organizations that are applying to get the go ahead from ICANN to set up and manage the African registry under…

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US-Congress receives request from DotConnectAfrica for a new gTLD Ombudsman to investigate and report on the existing illegality and irregularities on .africa

The new ICANN gTLD process has received quite unlikely request from an applicant for .africa string DotConnectAfrica which is headquartered in Mauritius, but has a strong base of representation in Kenya, Addis Ababa, California and the United Kingdom. DotConnectAfrica has applied to set up the registry in the Kenyan capital should ICANN delegate it to the applicant. source

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ICANN approves Internet domain expansion in 2013

Hundreds of Internet address suffixes to rival “.com” should be available for people and businesses to use by the end of the year, the head of an Internet oversight agency said Monday. The initial ones, expected in mid-2013, will likely be in Chinese and other languages besides English, said Fadi Chehade, CEO of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. source

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Breaking: ICANN Publishes Contention Sets & Only Puts Four Non-Match gTLD’s Strings Together

ICANN just published it long awaited New gTLD String Similarity Contention Sets fand quite surprisingly just put four non-matching applications into two contention sets. ICANN placed the new gTLD application for: .Hoteis by  Despegar Online SRL into the same contention set as  the application by Booking.com for .Hotels  ICANN however, did not include the 7 applications for .Hotel into the contention set for .Hotels. source  

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