The International Centre for Dispute Resolutions posted three more decisions concerning the string similarity objections yesterday. All the three decisions involved Donuts, one of the applicants with the largest domain portfolio.
Commercial Connect claimed that Donuts’ applications for .supplies and .商店 were too similar to Commercial Connect’s application for .shop. Panelist Lawrence Newman rejected the claims, noting there were neither string nor syllable similarity between .shop and .supply, while .商店 is internationalized, so there is no similarity to be found.
The other case was brought by Asiamix Digital Ltd, which applied for .fans domain and objected to Donuts’ application for .fan domain on the string similarity basis. The two parties are reported to have settled the objection. It is not clear what the agreement entailed, but neither party has withdrawn its application.
So far, just four new top level domains string similarity objections are to be processed.
