Board passes resolution that might delay certain new TLDs and approves a new UDRP provider.

While most of us were hanging with our families or on the golf course this weekend, ICANN’s board was approving a number of resolutions that could have a big affect on some parts of the domain name industry. Here’s what the board decided:

Some new TLDs may be delayed or rejected based on internal name conflicts. ICANN is going to further investigate the potential for security issues related to certain applied-for new TLDs and internally use domains such as .home. I would expect, at minimum, a delay on certain domain names.

There’s a new UDRP provider. Add Arab Center for Dispute Resolution to the list of approved UDRP providers. No, they won’t have to sign a contract, which means they’ll have some flexibility in changing their supplemental rules. Czech Arbitration Court, for example, adjusted its supplemental rules to allow a low cost UDRP option.

Approval of the FY 2014 budget will be late. ICANN’s 2014 fiscal year begins in June, but the budget won’t be approved until the July meeting in Durban. There’s also an open comment period for the fiscal plan right now. As a result, ICANN will go ahead with the proposed budget come June 1, and then approve it later.

Pack your bags for Los Angeles. The third ICANN meeting of 2014 will be October 12-16 in Los Angeles, where ICANN’s headquarters are located. (TRAFFIC organizers should take note when planning their fall conference next year.)

Fadi got his bonus, and something else happened… New ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade will get his second trimester of FY13 at-risk bonus. The board also approved a confidential resolution related to “personnel or employment matters”.

…and half believe they’ve lost business as a result.

.Co released some new research this morning regarding small businesses and domain names.

The research was carried out by Wakefield Research and asked questions about domain names to companies with 100 or fewer employees. Here are some of the interesting take-aways:

- 45% of small business owners don’t have a website or blog for their company. (That spells opportunity, my friends.)
- 49% of those with a site or blog are not completely satisfied with their domain name
- 55% of the small businesses with a site or blog believe they have lost business as a result of not getting their first choice of domain
- 52% would change their domain name if they had the opportunity to
- 63% of small business owners fail to consider the top level domain when selecting a second level domain
- 29% of small business owners says they don’t know what a “domain extension” is, and about 2 in 5 of those that say they know are actually incorrect. (If they asked about “top level domains”, I assume the number that would know what they are would be much lower.)
- 63% fail to consider the length when choosing a domain
- 57% said choosing a domain for their business was harder than naming their baby

Here’s the results presentation.

XBoxOne.com, the matching domain for Microsoft’s new video game system, was originally registered more than 10 years ago.

Microsoft today unveiled its new XBox video game system called XBox One.

Microsoft does not own the domain name XBoxOne.com, which currently resolves to a GoDaddy “coming soon” page.

The domain name was registered in 2002 by Xbox Rodents and was used for a site called XBox1. It then expired in 2011 and was registered by someone in London. XBox Rodents also owned XBox1.com and let it expire in 2011 as well.

So the big question: how important is it that Microsoft owns the domain name?

The main web site for all generations of the XBox is XBox.com, so you could argue that XBoxOne.com isn’t that important. On the other hand, XBoxOne.com could be use by someone for nefarious purposes or to “hijack” the sales channel.

I suspect Microsoft will own the domain name soon. I just don’t know which approach they’ll take to acquiring the domain.

If you comment on a post, it might affect the outcome of a patent application.

Whenever I post about a recently granted patent, comments inevitably turn to “that invention is nothing new” or “that’s a junk patent”.

I’m sure that at some point today there will be comments to that effect on my post about GoDaddy getting two appraisals for domain appraisals.

When an inventor applies for a patent, they make a bunch of claims. Some of these claims will surely be thrown out during the process, but it’s a starting point. The patent examiner pushes back and challenges some of the claims. What you often see published was not what the inventor originally submitted.

That’s where you come in.

Your comments on blog posts, your forum posts, your articles — they are often considered by patent examiners and shape the final form of a patent.

Consider the two GoDaddy patents I wrote about earlier today.

The patent examiner pushed back on some of the claims and cited Domain Name Wire (pdf) in doing so.

Alas, it was not my superior domain intelligence and knowledge that caught the eye of the examiner. Instead, it was a single comment that Stephen Douglas posted on my 2009 article “Why the Live Domain Auction Bombed (and Why I’m Not Surprised)”. Douglas commented about parts of speech and the value of domain names.

Remember Chef Patrick? He’s long gone from the domain name industry, but his 2008 post “What Makes A Premium Domain Name” was cited by the examiner. The patent examiner also referred to the Estibot.com user guide.

Your opinion carries weight and can even determine the outcome of a patent application. That’s pretty cool.

Paul Nicks’ inventions related to name spinning and appraisals get patent protection.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office today issued two patents to GoDaddy related to name spinning and appraisal.

U.S. Patent number 8,447,701 is titled “Appraising domain names using comparative data” and 8,447,702 (pdf) is “Domain appraisal algorithm”.

The patents have lots of overlapping material. They cover name spinning to create permutations of domain names as well as multiple aspects of automatically generating a domain name appraisal.

Here’s a summary of some of the aspects of domain valuation that the patent describes:

The appraisal may be accomplished by breaking the valuation of the domain into five logical groupings, possibly including evaluation of “5 P’s” related to the domain name. Evaluation of “precision” may include the number of distinct keywords found, the length of the name and the number of keywords found in the dictionary. Evaluation of “popularity” may include various search engine search result metrics and tracking of words searched per month. Evaluation of “presence” may include the age of the domain, and the rank of the web site according to web ranking services or software. Evaluation of “pattern” may include the number of premium characters, the part of speech (such as noun, plural noun, verb, adjective, etc., possibly considering if the domain is a one word domain), the relationship of vowels and consonants etc. (possibly considering if the domain is a 4-5 character word). Evaluation of Pay-Per-Click, or PPC, may include the maximum number of pay-per-click bids from various advertising tracking services or software, and the number of ads returned within search engine searches. A dynamic multiplier based on registration statistics for each of several top level domains (TLDs) may then be applied to the domain evaluation. This multiplier may be used to give a very accurate measure of domain scarcity to let a user or evaluator know how rare a domain name is.

Paul Nicks, Director of Product Development GoDaddy.com’s Aftermarket, is listed as inventor on both patents.