.Shop applicant Commercial Connect is the big loser in the latest batch of String Confusion Objections.
After a long drought, International Centre for Dispute Resolution (ICDR) has posted an updated list of String Confusion Objection decisions.
Today’s list includes nine more determinations, all found in favor of the applicant for the domains.
First, Verisign lost its objection to Donuts’ application for .network. Verisign argued that it was too similar to .net.
The other eight decisions all involved Commercial Connect. It lost all eight cases in which it argued the strings were too similar to .shop:
string (translation), applicant
.商城 (mall), Zodiac Capricorn
.家電 (shopconsumer electronics), Amazon (note that this is incorrectly noted in dispute announcement as an objection to .shop)
.网店 (online store), Zodiac Libra
.store, Amazon
.セール (sale), Amazon
.بازار (bizaar or market), CORE Association
.store, Dot Store Group LLC
.forsale, DERForsale, LLC
Panelist Robert Nau, who made the controversial determination in favor of Commercial Connect that .通販 (roughly translates to “Online Shopping” in Japanese) is too similar to .shop, was not among the panelists in today’s batch of decisions.
It’s still unclear why it took ICDR so long to publish these decisions. The panelists signed dates on the decisions ranging from August 12 to September 5.
Commercial Connect LLC was so busy crafting such a large number of objections that they failed to answer it’s own clarifying questions from ICANN, making them fail Initial Evaluation.
http://newgtlds.icann.org/sites/default/files/ier/1oapw3uko5d6eph5uwr8ub2o/ie-1-1830-1672-en.pdf
Although it’s likely they pass Extended Evaluation, the ones they prevailed against in objection would prefer otherwise.
Hi Andrew. It’s interesting to see .家電 translated as ‘shop’. Not sure whether it’s a Japanese or Chinese (traditional script) string. Both mean ‘consumer electronics’ or ‘electrical appliances’,
You’re right, Amazon put in its application that it means “consumer electronics”. I got confused reading the decision. It’s a mystery as to why ICDR’s list of cases, as well as what’s posted in the dispute announcement on ICANN’s web site, shows that the domain being objected to is .shop.