According to a press release out today WIPO “has been appointed by ICANN as the exclusive provider of dispute resolution services for trademark based ‘pre-delegation’ Legal Rights Objections under ICANN’s New gTLD Program,”
WIPO has a Q&A page on their site about this.
“”The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has embarked on a program of allowing new generic top-level domains on the internet (like .com), an initiative that has worried trademark holders and international organizations. Now the World Intellectual Property Organization Arbitration and Mediation Center is offering services for trademark holders who wish to challenge proposals for new gTLDs later this year.”
“”WIPO “has been appointed by ICANN as the exclusive provider of dispute resolution services for trademark based ‘pre-delegation’ Legal Rights Objections under ICANN’s New gTLD Program”
Basically WIPO will be handling objections to proposed strings filed by Trademark and other rights holders.
Its not going to be a cheap process to object to a string and it should be a nice revenue source for WIPO.
Michael H. Berkens@ I would like to ask your views on this post and comments?
http://fragerfactor.blogspot.com/2012/02/qr-codes-intended-as-domain-killers.html
Mike@ I would like your views on the Owen Frager post & comment:
“QR codes essentially mean being able to do a massive number of print insertions (magazines, signs, flyers etc.) and being able to track the traffic on a granular level without having to create dozens of vanity URLs per campaign. Just slap a campaign ID onto the end of a landing page URL, encode it in a QR Code, and you’ve got granular tracking. You can tell that someone scanned a subway sign as opposed to an ad in a magazine – even though they’re ending up in the same destination with their click-through/scan.”
All of which reminds me there is tremendous application for vanity domains to track response back to specific media and campaigns.
Jonathan said…
Owen@ What do you consider the long term impications of QR codes might be in relation to direct online use?
Seems to be the holy grail for Google adword auctions? No point in TLD registrations if all registrations (QR codes) are cognative calls to action. ICANN cannot be luddite in its views, Finding this difficult to get my head around. Will tell my grandson to become a trademark attorney and take on Twitter.
Jonathan
I really don’t like commenting on others bloggers thoughts but since your asking I definitely see that QR codes could and will be used more frequently in years to come.
I personally haven’t seem company’s use specific domains to track different media.
I have seen the occasional commercial that gives a longer URL based off of one domain with a /someinfo on the end but I don’t think there are tens of millions of domains used for this purpose that will somehow be replaced by QR codes
Mike@ Thank you for your comment. The request to comment is simply to flag up what seems to be a technically smart step around for TDL domain regstrations and therefor of concern to all domain registrants. We understand the importance of the smartphone & poss AppleTV. If I register “any-long-tv-insurance-carinsuranc.com Could I advertise Car Insurance with a QR code as my principle point of contact ? My question is really Has the technology takes us back to where Google wants us to be, all renting real estate from Google with no domain marketing advantages ?
Jonathan
Someone would have to study consumer behavior and QR codes and how often they are used compared to a good domain.
Here’s the deal.
1st of all not everyone knows what they are.
2nd you need to have a smart phone that has apps to download a reader.
3rd you need to have your phone with you when you see the QR code to use it, which may not always be the case especially when your at home looking through the newspaper.
I would have to know how often these are used per impression.
Are there any studies on this?
QR Codes would be great for “there and then” viewing of ads, offers, discounts, etc. However it does require the person to have a smart phone, the software to read it and the knowledge of what a QR code it.
For those that don’t fit into that category (Which is most, although should reduce over time), having a domain.com/landingpage will have to suffice. Of course, these don’t provide the granularity, as most people will end up just going to the domain.
Perhaps the new gTLDs will be a bridge between the two, e.g. http://christmas.sony. URLs which are easily remembered, yet different from the root domain. There is still a learning curve for this (people may write http://www.christmas.sony.com“), but the bar is certainly lower!
At least in North America, the studies I’ve seen on sites such as Mashable report on QR codes as waning in their already-paltry popularity. Michael B listed the reasons why in his comment. QR codes fall into the realm of social media, and in that realm, the maxim is, “Ease of use drives adoption.” Facebook and Twitter are extremely easy to use and even to update from a mobile device. QR codes, not so much. Plus in current usage, the consumer has to extend a lot of faith to use a QR code — most of the time, you don’t know what you’re going to get if you go to the trouble of scanning.
I find this study credible: http://www.slideshare.net/stevenvanbelleghem/social-media-around-the-world-2011 . It indicates that in Europe, only 12% of smartphone users utilize location-based services, and only 4% use augmented reality. While this bears only indirectly on QR codes, it doesn’t portray an environment for them where the trend is dramatic growth.
In short, I think the jury’s still out on whether QR codes can go mainstream outside of Asia.
Michael & all comments, thank you. My view is that QR codes are not the bridge for new vanity domains it seems that this “could” be much more fundamental that that, although quite what I do not know. The thing is easily remembered / root domain name means nothing to the public if Google advertised the product based on the adword search term Twitter style, just anther bit of code with the saving grace being that some code will have a direct relationship to our linguistics I mean generic Twitter user names are powerful (how many domainers covered one) I guess that the financial institution that is ICANN will protect its assets ??