Chinese company Jiangsu Bangning Science & Technology asked Facebook to pay $35 thousand to register its trademark in the new gTLD .TOP. The reason for such immoderate appetites is that the name that interests Facebook was in the ICANN block list as a potential source of problems due to the strings similarities.
Supposedly this is domain Facebook.TOP, that actually was in the block list of the domain zone. ICANN gives registries a 90-day period to resolve potential problems of this kind. This period has expired for .TOP. Social network tried to register the name it was interested in way back during the sunrise period. And the fee announced by the Jiangsu Bangning Science & Technology was disproportionately high in comparison with the registration fees during sunrise phases in other domains - $4.5 thousand. However, now it has risen by $30.000. Obviously, the registry might incur certain costs, while dealing with strings similarity, but none of the experts imagine what kind of costs made the registry jack the price up that much.
It should be noted that ICANN doesn’t control pricing mechanisms for the registration in the new gTLDs. Also there are no specific rules concerning pricing in relation to the domains earlier included in the blocking lists. However, experts unanimously call actions of Jiangsu Bangning Science & Technology extortion.
Domain manager of Facebook Susan Kawaguchi complained on an ICANN Generic Name Supporting Organization (GNSO) Council about registry’s actions.
