Category Archive

ICANN staff have requested a six-month delay in the delivery date of a Preliminary Issue Report on the “current state of all rights protection mechanisms (RPMs) implemented for both existing and new gTLDs, including but not limited to the UDRP and the URS”.  The request is contained in a January 5, 2015 e-mail sent by ICANN  Senior Policy Director Mary …

While the debate continues as to whether most new gTLDs are a sound long-term investment for their registry operators, there’s no disputing that the program has been an economic boom for ICANN. The 1,930 first round applications each required an application fee of $185,000, which added up to a tidy $357 million. Even after refunds for withdrawn applications ICANN still …

While we are not privy to the details, we have received word that there has been a settlement in the litigation brought by Chan Luu against Grant Shellhammer and Online Growth. As we first reported in early October, more than 5,000 domain names were said to have been transferred by VeriSign to Uniregistrar after it was served with a sealed …

ICA Counsel Philip Corwin has been appointed to the first Stakeholder Council ever established for .US, the country code top level domain (ccTLD) of the United States. The Charter of this new Council sets its Scope of Work as follows: The Council will address matters related to the operation of the usTLD in the interest of the usTLD user community. …

ICANN 51 taking place in Los Angeles this week may not have its customary evening Gala, but it opened with rousing remarks by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker in the first-ever ICANN appearance of the head of the Cabinet agency from which it was born and which has exercised continuous oversight of its key IANA functions. The themes of …

Noted domain investor, industry advisor, blogger, and ICA member Mike Berkens has alerted us to a very disturbing occurrence. Unfortunately for Mike, he has been directly impacted by it. According to an October 2nd blog post at The Domains, “As Many As 5K .Com’s Taken Away By Sealed Court Order By Verisign Including Some Of Mine”— Overnight I received a …

In late August the GNSO Council received an ICANN staff response to a Resolution on subsequent rounds of new gTLDs passed during its June meeting in London. At the time the response was issued only 373 gTLDs had been delegated out of the 1321 total applications being processed. So the first round of the program still has a long way …

On September 4th ICANN’s GNSO Council confirmed the appointment of ICA Counsel Philip Corwin as Co-Chairman of the IGO-INGO Access to Curative Rights Protection Mechanisms Working Group. This WG will have to consider a broad array of issues that are relevant not only to its own work but to the broader upcoming review of the rights protection measures (RPMs) created …

On September 3rd the ICA filed a comment letter with ICANN opposing a Bylaws amendment proposal to raise the threshold for Board rejection of Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) “advice” from a simple majority to a two-thirds vote. The GAC presently submits advice to ICANN based on “consensus”, which is general agreement without objection. But, in the wake of the U.S. …