The ICANN Board of Directors held their Board Meeting in San Francisco at the conclusion of the “Silicon Valley Public Meeting”. In a major development, the Board, for the first time, provided a timeline for approving the new Top Level Domain applicant guidebook.

The Board stated it will hold a special meeting on June 20^th to review the guidebook just prior to the start of the ICANN’s “Singapore Public Meeting”.

There are still some hurdles that must be overcome, such as the differences with Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), but feedback from the GAC is expected by March 25. Once feedback has been given, the final GAC scorecard for constituency comment is expected by April 15 with a public comment period ending May 15. On May 20, the GAC and the Board will have a teleconference to discuss the final scorecard. If all goes according to plan, the final guidebook will be posted May 30 and the board will consider it for approval on June 20.

If approved in June there will be a four (4) month communication period to the global Internet community before the application process would begin. Under the current timeline published by ICANN, the application period for new gTLDs could begin in October 2011, with delegation of new gTLD strings into the root zone in the 2^nd quarter of 2012.

Safenames will continue to keep you updated as we learn more about new developments with the new gTLD program.

If you would like to apply for a TLD for your brand or have any questions regarding new gTLDs and the ICANN application process, please contact your Safenames account manager.

You may also contact the Safenames UK office at +44 1908 200022 and emeasales@safenames.net, or the Safenames US office at +1.703.574.5313 and nasales@safenames.net.

Related posts:

1. ICANN Board and GAC to Meet: Final Hurdle for New gTLDs?
2. ICANN posts new TLD Applicant Guidebook – Could Approval for new Domain Extensions be next?
3. ICANN Board approves plan to begin accepting new gTLD applications in May 2011

VeriSign, operators of .COM, .NET, .NAME, and service provider to .EDU, .JOBS, .CC, and .TV, today placed a “Registry Service Request” in to ICANN that proposes that a registrar can swap a .net domain name for another .net domain name, if the request comes from the same registrar.

The premise is that registrars are faced with losses from customer abandonment or other ‘shrinkage’ that leaves them holding a registration through to its annual term, because domain names are billed in a minimum of one year increments.

Within a 365 day calendar, this would conceivably allow, for the price of 1 .net domain, 12 different domains to be reviewed for the inherent traffic that a domain gets.

The challenge for UDRP Complainants is that an infringing domain name can appear or disappear in 30 day windows, so watch for some interesting comments in the registry services commentary, which have already begun.

UPDATE 02/18/2010 12:47pm: We have confirmed these findings to be correct.

It has often been asserted by trademark holders that the new round of gTLDs will have a major and catastrophic financial impact on brands.

But beyond these alarmist statements, is there any empirical evidence to either back this up, or to prove it false?

After examining all UDRP cases done by WIPO and the NAF, sorted by TLD, the evidence shows that new gTLDs play a very minor role in UDRPs, and that to the extent that a TLD matters, .com more prone to infringement than other, newer gTLDs. Infringements, as measured by UDRPs filed (regardless of outcome), show that infringement broadly correlate to the number of domains registered in a TLD zone, and not to the newness or recency of a TLD.

The study also predicts that if 300 new TLDs were created (an estimate made by several observers, including ICANN), there would be 316 new additional UDRPs filed. When combined with the new Uniform Rapid Suspension provisions that will be required for new gTLDs, these cases would result in a total additional cost to trademark holders of $869,000, or less than $.10 per trademark registered worldwide.

The data shows that, for enforcement via UDRP and URS, assertions that brand holders would be faced with enormous costs have been substantially overestimated.

Read the study.

Two new letters have been posted on the Correspondence page of the ICANN website, one by Yahoo and one by Fish & Richardson on behalf of U. Inc. Both companies are in support of the release of single letter domain names.

If you traveled to Vancouver for the ICANN Annual Meeting, you might have also seen representatives from Overstock.com giving away “O” hats. Overstock had previously written to ICANN in support of the release of O.com. ICANN has also received a letter on the release of K.com.

If single letter domain names are to be released, I’d like to see more information on how these names are going to be made available (via auction, first come, first served release, select reservation or other methods). Companies are already claiming trademark rights in domain names that have yet to be made available.