Nicholas Weston - INTA tilts at new internationalised GTLDs and ccTLDs coming in 2010
The Full Employment Act for Domain Name Practitioners, otherwise known as the new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) ‘internationalised domain names’ (IDN) program proposed by ICANN (the acronym obsessed, global domain name bureaucrats), could be active on the Internet by the end of 2010. Under this program, it is proposed that (in summary), generic, geographical and brand names can be registered to the right of the last dot (for example, .melbourne, .aboriginal, .christian and so on). These may conflict with existing gTLD’s and ccTLD’s and with trade marks in various jurisdictions. The critical path seems to be as follows:
- Draft Applicant Guidebook (DAGv3) will be released by ICANN prior to the Seoul ICANN meeting in late October 2009.
- DAGv4 (final version) likely to be published in December 2009.
- First application cycle in February 2010
- Validation period: 4 - 5 months
- Sign off on applications by the Board of ICANN: > 7 months
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