Domain won’t be pigeon-holed to just Colombia in search engine’s eyes.

[Update: since some people asked, I successfully confirmed this with Google.]

One of the concerns registrants of .co domain names have voiced is if Google will treat the domain as specific to Colombia instead of a generic, international domain name. This is a valid concern given that country code domain names are the top factor Google considers when figuring out who content is created for.

According to a story at PCPro.co.uk, a popular computing site, Google has confirmed that it will allow .co to be treated as an international domain name.

While the .co domain is still assigned to Colombia at the moment, a Google spokesperson said that would soon change. “We will rank .co domains appropriately if the content is globally targeted. Webmasters will soon have the functionality to be able to specify this by using the geotargeting options in Google Webmaster Tools.”

This will give .co a big boost, as it was one of the most frequent arguments I’ve heard in recent weeks against registering .co domains.

A battle for foodies.

Online food delivery portal GrubHub.com has lost a domain name dispute against the owner of HubGrub.com, with a National Arbitration Forum panelist finding against GrubHub.com on all counts.

It’s an interesting case for a few reasons. First, it points out there might be confusion of word order when you use a two word domain name. This is something for entrepreneurs to think about; they might want to get both versions of their domain name.

Second, part of GrubHub.com’s failing, according to the panelist, was that the trademark “GrubHub” was registered in an individual’s name, while the complaint was brought by that person’s (presumably) company instead of the individual. The individual needed to assign the trademark to the company or file an affidavit explaining this discrepancy. Even had this not been the case, the panelist said HubGrub is not confusingly similar to GrubHub.

Third, at least as the panelist summarized each party’s contentions, there was a lot of contradiction. The panelist’s summary of the complainant’s contentions says:

Respondent’s website is not operational and purports to be “available soon”

and then:

Respondent’s website format and design is intentionally set up to mimic grubhub.com’s website

These seem to contradict.

The respondent’s assertions make some sense, although it looks like the respondent reversed course recently and launch HubGrub as a site dedicated to hunger charities.

Conference makes its return in a very nice location.

After taking a year off, Thought Convergence’s Domain Roundtable is making a return in 2011 in a big way: a trip to the Bahamas. The event will take place March 1-4, 2011 at Atlantis in the Bahamas. Other details are not yet available.

Last month I asked readers to participate in a poll asking where you’d prefer to see a domain conference: Hawaii or Bahamas. The response was fairly evenly split between the two locations. Yes, you were helping to decide the location of Domain Roundtable.

Last year’s Domain Roundtable took place in Washington, D.C. Domain Roundtable is produced by Thought Convergence, the parent company of TrafficZ and DomainTools.

Company wants trademark for .Schott.

German glass and component company Schott AG has filed a trademark application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for “.schott” for “Registration of domain names (legal services); management of domain names; renting or leasing of domain names; allocation of domain names; trading in domain names.”

This is an interesting move that means one of two things:

1. The company plans to acquire its own top level domain name as .schott

OR

2. The company wants added protection against a new top level domain name applicant trying to get its name as a top level domain name.

It seems that the latter case would be more a worry of larger, bigger brands. Regardless, current U.S. Patent and Trademark guidelines suggest that the servicemark application will be denied since top level domain names can’t be trademarked.

Group says new TLDs aren’t meant for single brands that don’t offer second level domains to the public.

One of the understood use cases for new top level domain names is a company creating .brand. Canon has already expressed its intentions to apply for .canon.

But in comments by Japan Network Information Center, which provides allocation and registration services of IP addresses and AS numbers in Japan, says this clearly isn’t the purpose of new TLDs:

The current New gTLD process is based upon a GNSO report to the Board “Introduction of New Generic Top-Level Domains” dated Sept. 11, 2007. The report is obviously a set of policy recommendations for introduction of “TLDs for registry business”, that is, TLDs which are aimed for third-party registrations of second level domain names in the TLD. This fact is clearly seen in Recommendation 1(p.19), Recommendations 16 and 19(p.21), for example, in the report. Therefore, it is obvious that these kinds of proprietary TLDs are out of scope of the current New gTLD process. We strongly urge ICANN to clearly state this fact in the forthcoming final version of the New gTLD RFP for the next round.

Although many will disagree with JPNIC on this issue, I think there hasn’t been enough thought given to the challenges of allowing a company to own its own TLD. You’d assume Canon would want a contract that has different provisions from the typical registry that wants to offer second level domain names to the public. There’s also the issue of trademarking a top level domain name. And ICANN would surely face a legal battle if it canceled a company’s registry contract based on some break.