One more significant stage of the new gTLD program comes this week. July 29 is a deadline to finally signing a Registry Agreement with ICANN by representatives of the registries applying for new gTLDs. At the moment 188 applications are “In Contracting” in the program. There are about 170 dot-brands among them.
Partly, their "delay start” is dictated by the objective reasons. In particular, it is a necessity of changes in the Registry Agreement, which, for example, prescribes a Sunrise period for the right holders. It is obvious that this requirement doesn’t make sense in a situation with dot-brands. However there is another reason. It lies in the fact that large companies – namely they are applicants for dot-brands –seem to fail to solve for themselves whether dot-brands are necessary to them and how they should be used.
"Some of applicants for dot-brands haven’t been ready to their lauch organizationally or technically yet, – VP of ICANN’s domain name services Cyrus Namazi told Domain Incite. – Others must fail to even know what to do with them. In many cases the application for the new domain could have defensive registration character – to be in time to take a name until it is made by applicants. Also companies could have expectations connected with market development for new TLDs that have gone a bit slower than some people’s business plans called for”.
Anyway, ICANN expects that most of the applicants for new domains will sign contracts this week. Those who won't make it for any reason will receive a “final notice” and a delay of 2 months – until the first of October. If a company applicant for the new TLD does miss this deadline, the application will be cancelled, and money and time spent for its registration happen to be wasted.
