Breaking: ICANN Publishes Contention Sets & Only Puts Four Non-Match gTLD’s Strings Together

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ICANN just published it long awaited New gTLD String Similarity Contention Sets fand quite surprisingly just put four non-matching applications into two contention sets.

ICANN placed the new gTLD application for:

.Hoteis by  Despegar Online SRL into the same contention set as  the application by Booking.com for .Hotels

ICANN however, did not include the 7 applications for .Hotel into the contention set for .Hotels.

It should also be noted that the applicant for .Hoteis also has an application for .Hotels.

The only other non-matching contention set by ICANN was the brand application for .Unicom filed by China United Network Communications Corporation Limited with the application for .Unicorn filed by  Unicorn a.s.

The rest of the contention sets announced by ICANN today, were direct matching applications for which there are 230.

The only caveat is that the announcement by ICANN says it is “New gTLD String Similarity Contention Sets as of 26 February 2013”, and doesn’t say if it is the final set or whether there might be additional changes.

Many applicants and others in the ICANN community speculated as to what new gTLD applications would be put with other similar applications increasing the number of applications in contention and/or increasing the number of contention sets.

The announcement by ICANN tonight on Contention sets is one of the last open questions before initial evaluations are announced starting in March.

 

About Michael Berkens

Michael Berkens, Esq. is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also the co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. which sold around 70K domain to Godaddy.com in December 2015 and now owns around 8K domain names . Michael was also one of the 5 Judges selected for the the Verisign 30th Anniversary .Com contest.

Comments

  1. Brad Mugford says

    So .law, .legal, .attorney, .lawyer, .esq are not similar enough?
    .Hotel is not similar to .Hotels?

    The list could go on and on.

    It will be very hard and expensive to market an extension when there are so many that are similar.

    I wish the gTLD applicants good luck with that clusterfu**.

    Brad

  2. Jeff Schneider says

    Hello MHB,

    I see the Bridge to No Where? continues. This gTLD Folly gets sillier by the day. What a scam.

    If it keeps on Rainin, the levees Gonna BREAK !

    Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)

  3. Michael Berkens says

    Brad

    While with most issues with ICANN the issue of what applications would be placed together under string contention has been the subject of much debate my understanding is the only issue are strings like look confusing such as a “i” and a “l” not what the meaning of the word is or how it sounds, so strings like .ink @ .inc which sound identical were not put together

  4. Jeff Schneider says

    Hello MHB,

    I thought your header would be something like this?

    The gTLD phenomonon funnels revenue dollars back to participants, .COM Profit Centers. So which would you rather own a .COM profit center or cracked Actor ?

    Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)

  6. accent says

    There is, I believe, an independent “String Similarity Evaluation Panel ” which was supposed to do the evaluations. Is this from them?

    More strings = more money for ICANN. That seems the only factor considered here.

  8. Michael Berkens says

    Brad

    The test that ICANN set out is if the strings look to confusingly similar, that is it so and ‘i” that might look like an ‘”l”

    ICANN could have broadened the definition to include strings that had the same meaning or one that included plural and singulars strings but they didn’t.

    The Guidebook was very clear as to how ICANN defined New gTLD String Similarity Contention Sets and this is a propery result under that definition, however we think ICANN should have done it differently

  10. Jeff Schneider says

    Hello MHB,

    This Ship Of Fools is a No Launch, and if not get ready to have a cease and desist eventually put on your gTLD choices. The WTO is jamming this behind the scenes.

    Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)

  11. Zany says

    the same MEANing might have been difficult since some words have multiple meanings…like the word MEAN.

    so then they would have to come up with some set of rules to define “meaning” and this of course would have to go through public comment/opinion and would have probably taken another year to resolve.

    There will be a lot of things that come up now that the first round results are coming in. Hindsight is 20/20 or so they say. Let’s just make sure we take lessons learned from this round and apply them to the next round