Members of ICANN’s Business Constituency applied to corporation’s management asking to take action against overpricing of the premium names in new gTLDs. Earlier on this subject was actively discussed in relation to prices established for registrations in .SUCKS during Sunrise. Registration of the domain name that coincides with a trademark costs no less than $2,000.
As it turns out this is not the limit. According to the data Business Constituency supplied to Domain Incite website, operator of the domain zone asks $17,610 for the registration of instagram.love. Facebook.love costs $8,930, google.love - $6,610. Google Corporation has also filed a public comment where it pointed out that such prices are absolutely unreasonable and harm interests of trademark owners as well as ICANN’s reputation.
New gTLD registries at their end claim that how “premium” the name is the registry determines automatically: it depends on the frequency of search of that specific word online. Evatt Merchant, one of the executives at Merchant Law Group that operates .LOVE domain zone points out that if the word is a dictionary word, the registry is free to set the price depending on how popular it is. If the word is a trademark name, then obviously trademark owners are right and they should contact the registry directly so that it changes the price of the domain. In this regard we are happy for Google and Instagram and could only sympathize with Apple.
