After months of preparations and negotiations, the first stage in the application process for the first new gTLD in years, .biz, goes live on Monday. Make sure you stake a claim on your .biz by submitting your intellectual property claim form from Monday – further details below.

Have a nice weekend,

Colette - N3lite@netnames.com

.BIZ – first phase opens Monday

The first stage of the application process for .biz, the first new top level domain name for several years, and the Internet’s first business-centric domain suffix, goes live this Monday, May 14, 2001. .biz will be the essential suffix for all businesses on the Internet, so make sure you stake your claim NOW.

Below is a brief explanation of the application process. For more detailed information, and a link to the IP Claim Form, please go to www.gtld.com, the NetNames web site dedicated to providing information on all the new generic Top Level Domains.

Phase one, involves submission of the Intellectual Property (IP) Claim Forms, enabling owners of existing, pending or common law trade and servicemarks to stake their claim on a .biz domain name.

During the third phase, all application requests will be processed, with names selected at random ignoring the order in which applications were received.

2. NetNames News

Afilias announces opening of registration for .info

Afilias, the registry selected by ICANN to operate the new .INFO top-level domain (TLD) of which NetNames is a part, has announced the first stage of registration for the .info rollout to begin approximately 45 days following the signing of the ICANN contract expected by mid-May and subject to US Department of Commerce approval.

This first stage of registration, the Sunrise Period, is a 30 day period, prior to the opening of public registration, where trademark and service mark holders will be able to reserve their exact marks in the .INFO domain. Following the Sunrise Period, Afilias will open registration to the general public, expected in the third quarter of 2001.

“The rollout of .INFO will be an opportunity for organisations to re-think not only their Web strategy, but also their brand strategy,” said Richard Lindsay, Chairman of the Afilias Board of Directors. “With the availability of new top-level domains, brand managers and intellectual property specialists alike will have new ways for communicating with consumers worldwide."

Afilias will be providing special Sunrise Challenge procedures for those who wish to dispute registrations made during the Sunrise Period. These services will be exclusively provided by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) and will last for approximately 120 days following the conclusion of the Sunrise Period. Following the conclusion of the Sunrise Challenge period, claimants may use the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) and/or the regular court system in order to resolve additional disputes.

3. Industry News

PepsiCo wins domain challenge

PepsiCo. Inc. has gained control of an Internet domain name held by a Texan company with no relationship to the soft drinks giant. The holder, Datasphere Ltd. argued that it had done nothing wrong and that Pepsi had approved to its holding of the pepsicola.com domain name because Pepsi hadn’t taken steps to challenge it for more than four years.

However the arbitration panel ruled that Pepsi hadn’t authorised this, because the trademark holder had done nothing to lead Datasphere to believe it had permission to use the trademark in a domain name.

4. NIC News

auDA approves changes to domain name policy

At a meeting held on 8 May 2001, the auDA Board (the self-regulatory body for the Australian domain space) accepted the following recommendations. This means that there will be a number of changes to domain name policy, including:

- no limit on the number of domain names per entity;

- a renewal period for all domain names;

- inclusion of trade marks as eligibility criteria for a domain name;

- a close and substantial connection between a domain name and its licensee;

- creation of a 'reserved list' for domain names that may not be licensed.

The Board re-affirmed the current policy, that domain names be allocated on a 'first come, first served' basis.

5. Fact of the Week

On March 29, 2001 there were 414,543 Internet nameservers (individual computers) serving 29,079,174 gTLD domain names. The largest number of domains served by any one nameserver was more than 1.35 million.