A very uneasy situation develops around new TLD .tata. It was the last one approved by ICANN in June. Now Indian industrial conglomerate Tata Group has the right to administer it. Their intention is to use it as a dot-brand. This domain was approved the last because for a long time representatives of Morocco were against its delegation. The problem is that a small province in this country holds the same name. According to ICANN rules, in such situations when the territory holds the same name as the domain, delegation of the TLD is only possible if the government of the country supports this or that application. According to official report, this is what eventually happened in this case as well.
However, it became known yesterday that one of the top officials of Morocco’s ministry of trade sent a letter to ICANN. In the letter he expressed “surprise and very deep frustration” that .tata domain was given to the Indian company. He assured that Moroccan government hasn’t supported Indian application in any way.
Probably, we should wait for clarification from ICANN and representatives of Tata Group. It remains unknown what type of documents were presented by the Indian company as the evidence of support from Morocco. It gets even more interesting since 52nd ICANN meeting is to take place in Morocco in February 2015.
