May flowers? A look back at the month in domaining.

Summer isn’t officially here in the northern hemisphere, but as schools call it quits for the year it certainly seems that way. Here’s a look back at the top stories on Domain Name Wire for May, ranked by number of page views.

1. Monte Cahn Sues Oversee.net Over $13 Million Incentive Plan – it’s unfortunate to see a court battle between Moniker’s founder and one of the biggest companies in the industry. We’ll have to see how it plays out.

2. Urgent: Now Intellectual Property Group Wants to Apply New Rights Protections to .Net – it was urgent, although BoingBoing misunderstood it.

3. .XXX Domain Pricing From $75 – a run down of how much you can expect to pay for the .xxx top level domain name.

4. How to Avoid Go Daddy’s 60 Day Lock for Whois Changes – Here’s how to avoid Go Daddy’s 60 day lock on transfers after changing whois information on your domains.

5. Google Adsense for Domains Now Allows Template Selection – Google’s self-service Adsense solution slowly adds new features.

Company wants to trade up to better domain name through lawsuit.

Leisure Hotel Corporation has filed a lawsuit against the owner of Leisure.com claiming trademark infringement, counterfeiting, false designations of origin, and cybersquatting (pdf).

Let me ask you a simple question: If you were the person who plunked down $150,000 to buy Leisure.com a couple years ago, what would you plan to do with it? The most obvious thing would be a site about travel. It’s a great use of a good generic domain name.

Generic.

But not according to Leisure Hotel Corporation, which bills itself as providing “a wide array of services in the hospitality, restaurant, and resort businesses”.

The company claims that Leisure.com’s use as a travel booking comparison engine infringes its marks:

The Website prominently uses LEISURE nominative phrases, including without limitation, LEISURE, LEISURE.COM, LEISURE SEARCH, and LEISURE TRAVEL (collectively the “Infringing Marks”), in its domain name and throughout the content of the webpages accessible at the Website.

Well, duh. It’s a web site about leisure.

Among Leisure Hotel Corporation’s demands is a lot of money and to get its hands on the domain name.

Man files lawsuit after losing UDRP.

The same attorney who successfully defended the owner of glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com has filed a reverse domain name hijacking lawsuit on behalf of the owner of AirFX.com.

Marc Lurie lost a case over AirFX.com brought against him by AirFX, LLC in a National Arbitration Forum proceeding. Together with attorney Marc J. Randazza, he is now suing AirFX, LLC (pdf) for reverse domain name hijacking in U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona.

Lurie says he registered the domain name AirFX.com along with several other potential brands when working on a new line of indoor skydiving facilities.

The suit claims:

Now, a business entity from another state, selling a completely unrelated product (i.e., motorcycle parts), has decided that it covets the domain name. Undeterred by the fact that it has no legitimate claim to the domain name, Defendant has attempted to invent one – falsely asserting to a domain name dispute arbitration panel that Lurie has acted with some nefarious purpose. Unfortunately, under the relaxed evidentiary standards for those proceedings, Defendant succeeded in falsely painting Lurie as a serial cybersquatter, and in falsely asserting superior rights to the domain name, without a shred of any kind of proof to support its claims.

Lurie is asking for injunctive relief to prevent the domain name from being transferred as a result of the UDRP decision. He is not asking for damages or attorneys fees.

ICANN staff says now is not the time to open wholesale rethink of UDRP.

Echoing the sentiments of a number of UDRP providers as well as prominent UDRP defense attorneys, ICANN’s staff has recommended against having the Generic Names Supporting Organization opening a “policy development process” on UDRP.

However, in a new report ICANN notes that there are some complaints about process and implementation of UDRP that may warrant review should GNSO feel it necessary to proceed:

…if the GNSO Council nevertheless believes that the UDRP should be reviewed, Staff suggests an alternative approach for addressing this issue. After carefully evaluating the issues and concerns expressed by the ICANN community regarding the UDRP, Staff has concluded that many relate to process issues associated with the implementation of the UDRP, rather than the language of the policy itself. The GNSO Council should consider in lieu of commencing a PDP, convening a small group of experts to produce recommendations to improve the process or implementation of the UDRP policy as an initial step…

The report includes a good summary of a recent webinar and comments made by various parties of the UDRP. It’s open for comment through July 15.

It also includes survey responses from each of the four UDRP providers. The responses include what percentage of the time the provider found in favor of the respondent (of those that result in a formal decision):

National Arbitration Forum 13%
WIPO 14%
Czech Arbitration Court 17% (low sample size)
Asian Domain Name Dispute Resolution Centre 7.4%

The guidebook itself won’t be done — but ICANN will approve something in June.

I’ve gone through the latest version of the new top level domain name applicant guidebook and read ICANN’s explanation of what it is.

I’d call it version 0.7 (beta).

And I’d argue that there will be no approval of the guidebook at June’s ICANN meeting in Singapore. Instead, ICANN hopes to loosely “approve the new gTLD program”.

It’s right there in ICANN’s introduction to the latest guidebook.

The Applicant Guidebook is intended to be a comprehensive guide and will be regularly updated as aspects of the process are implemented. The Board will listen to community dialogue at the ICANN public meeting in Singapore, and will continue to solicit comments on specific areas.

Well, you can’t “approve” something in its final state if you will solicit comments after you plan to vote on the approval.

The introduction then states:

The Board of Directors will consider approval of the New gTLD Program at an extraordinary meeting on Monday, 20 June 2011, during ICANN’s international meeting in Singapore.

For years the ICANN community has been equating the official approval of the program to be the approval of the guidebook.

But that need not be the case. Instead, expect ICANN to consider “approval of the new gTLD program” at the June 20 meeting. The guidebook will be open ended. There’s no way all outstanding issues will be settled by then, and ICANN is admitting this with its latest language.

That said, it’s possible that the communications period will launch after the Singapore meeting. That would be a big win for new TLD applicants as the marketing activities can run concurrent to finalizing application terms.

Still, I don’t think ICANN Chairman Peter Dengate Thrush’s planned party to celebrate approval will be as exciting with this looming over applicants’ heads.