Rights to IDN domain name sell for $600,000.
Beijing Tele-info Network Technology Co. has won the first ICANN “auction of last resort” to resolve a new top level domain name contention set.
It paid $600,000 in an auction for .信息, which roughly translates to “info”. The losing party was Afilias, which operates the .info domain name.
This is the first of many planned auctions to resolve contention sets. ICANN published an auction report that includes the round prices and final price, which is one more reason new TLD applicants will want to avoid these auctions and settle matters privately. Competitors will be able to use bid prices to their benefit for future contention set resolution.
ICANN’s auctions should have lower bid prices than private auctions because the losing bidders don’t get paid off. That said, some of the thorniest contention set auctions will head to ICANN auctions — and should have rather high prices.
As a comparison point, for how much a good IDN domain sells these days ?