Coming soon, .africa and .dotafrica.
There were certainly some interesting top level domain applications released today. But it looks like a few companies made mistakes — or wasted some money at the very least.
First, some have reported that they were surprised to only see one .africa application. After all, DotConnectAfrica said it was going to still apply for the domain despite dispute over support of African governments. But then today’s list shows only one .africa application from UniForum SA (NPC) trading as Registry.Africa.
Here’s why: DotConnectAfrica’s application shows up as .dotafrica. Seriously.
Was this an error ICANN made putting it on the list? Or did DotConnectAfrica screw up with its application? If the latter, will it get a chance to fix it?
VistaPrint submitted four applications, including two for .webs. It looks like one is a regular application and one is a community application.
First of all, trying to pass .webs off as a community application is a joke. Second, it’s the only applicant for the domain so it just wasted double application fees (assuming it’s not deemed a conflict with .web.) VistaPrint owns webs.com.
Merck applied for .merck three times. Two of the applications come with the help of consulting firm Fairwinds Partners, including one submitted as a community application. But as you can imagine in a large company, it looks like a separate unit of Merck also applied for .merck! That group also applied for .emerck.
Mike Rodenbaugh says
There are two different Merck entities, one in US and one in Europe. They both want .Merck. One of them appears to have a fallback plan with .eMerck.
JS says
Verisign is also looking at a misspell in its hebrew app.
Volker says
Mike is right. The Merck application will be and interesting battle to watch. IIRC, both have applied as normal and as community, probably based on the expectation that the other will do so as well. If both community applications fail to be recognized as such, they could fall back to a potentially less restricted non-community TLD application.
In fact, if you have the money to spare, that is the way to go. Secure better rights with the community application, and either drop for a partial refund it if there are no contention strings or the community definition fails to enjoy a less restrictive TLD. If there is competition, they can stick to the community app to enjoy preferential treatment at the cost of a more restrictive TLD.
dotafrice: Either it is a serious bungle which will result in rolling heads, or there is an actual business plan behind it.
I am looking forward to the “secondary reveal”, when the public parts of the applications become public.
Any date for that, ICANN?
Andrew Allemann says
Then if we count Merck as contested, I’m aware of three contested .brands: Guardian, Merck, SAS. That doesn’t include .ping, which Karsten is going after as a brand and Radix as a generic.
John Berryhill says
“I am looking forward to the
John Berryhill says
“The Merck application will be and interesting battle to watch.”
Not as interesting as it was in 1917, I suppose…