The Government Advisory Council (GAC) to ICANN issued 242 early warnings to new gTLD applicants tonight involving 145 strings.
After a quick review, The government of Australia seems to have issued the most early warnings with Germany and India following.
The United States only issued a few early warnings, but they included Demand Media,Inc (DMD) applications for .Army, .Navy and .Airforce.
The US also issued an early warning against all 31 of Radix application but that seemed to be due to a letter of support they included from the FBI which the US government is asking Radix to remove from their applications.
Here is what the US had to say about Radix applictions:
“”Early warning for the applications by Directi which incorrectly cite an invitation from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to a conference as an endorsement/recommendation.
The notice is based on Directi’s incorporation into its applications of an email from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The referenced email was not sent as a recommendation for or in support of a new gTLD or an applicant. ”
“We request Directi to remove from its gTLD applications the FBI email in question or any reference to said email as part of the Directi gTLD applications”.
Many of the Amazon application subject to early warnings as were other closed generic strings by other applicants like .baby by Johnson & Johnson, and L’Oreal is hoping for .beauty, .hair, .makeup, .salon and .skin.
Not surprisingly there were early warnings issued for .sucks, .wtf, .fail, .gripe.
Religious new gTLD’s applications also drew early warnings including; islam, .halal and .bible.
If you follow theDomains.com on Twitter we predicted earlier today 227 to be the number of GAC early warnings so we came pretty close.
An applicant can receive an 80% refund if they withdraw their application within 21 days after receiving an GAC early warning, warning also does not mean that the applications will be rejected by the GAC and applicants can modify in some cases their applications to overcome the objection of the GAC. You can read more about what an GAC early warning means to applicants here.
