OnlineDomain.com Domain Name News & Opinions
Elaine Pruis, Vice President, Operations at Donuts Inc, clarified why Donuts is delaying the release of 2-character domains until September and how the 2 character domains will be treated in regards to sunrise claims.
Elaine Pruis made a comment on a post I wrote about Donuts Releasing The 2-Character Domains On September 9th:
Konstantinos, thank you for sharing the information about Donuts’ release of the “name collision” and two-character names. The intentional hold on the release of two character names is due to three reasons:
1) There remain a few outstanding approvals from ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee on certain two-character names, and more time will allow greater potential resolution of those names;
2) It will be easier for the marketplace to address the release of two-character names at once rather than releasing them sporadically; and
3) most importantly, according to ICANN’s rights protection mechanism requirements, the names will pass through the 90-day trademark claims period, and opening claims at the same time for all names reduces confusion and eases customer communication for registrars (note that two character names are treated differently from collision names, which are exempt from claims).
I hope this information helps.
As I found out 2-character trademark holders could not apply for any domain names during the sunrise phase because ICANN had initially reserved all 2-character domains. (Neither could 1-character trademark holders but that is not changing.) So the trademark clearinghouse had no reason to open applications for 2 character domain names.
But that has changed now. There will be a 90-day sunrise phase (has it started already?) specifically for these domain names.
Donuts is also delaying the release of 2-character domains because a lot of country codes are included in this list. Not all countries have replied yet if they allow their respective ccTLDs to be sold as domain names in the New gTLD namespace. Many ICANN comment periods are still open. So Donuts will wait for all comment periods to close and then release all 2 character domains in one batch.
I checked my notes from Domaining Europe in Valencia and I found that I was told from a Donuts representative that 2 character domains were not accepted by the trademark clearinghouse (correct) and there wasn’t going to be a sunrise for them (not correct). Maybe she confused 2-character domains with 1-character domains or maybe I misunderstood. Anyway, 1-character domains were not and will not be part of any sunrise phase.
Other collision names (not 2-character domains) where included in previous sunrise phases and everyone that applied will now receive their domain names as Donuts has started releasing collision domains last week.
Donuts Has Started Releasing 1.369 Million Reserved Collision Domain Names
You are wrong. 90-day trademark claims period is not Sunrise period. In Sunrise period only trademark holders may apply for their marks/domains. Ask Elaine Pruis for clarification, if you don’t understand a difference.
I know the difference. Maybe I misunderstood because the trademark claims period doesn’t make any sense in this situation as there is no sunrise period to follow. So I assumed they meant a sunrise. I am puzzled with this and so are many others…
90-day trademark claims period means that trademark holders will receive a notification when someone (anyone!) register a domain name matching their trademarks. It is unfair, because trademark holders will NOT have a priority, it will be first-come-first-served. Another word, registration of such trademark with Clearinghouse is just a waste of money, getting absolutely nothing useful. If Donuts is a fair company, they should run a real Sunrise, even ICANN doesn’t require that.
Now that I think about it seems like they can’t! The problem is with ICANN and the TMCH.
Also the 90 day trademark phase (if it is already running) makes no sense as these domains can’t be registered until September.
It is going to be an extra 90-day trademark claims period, not the regular one. But no extra Sunrise period (is required).
Hey, what new in Greece?
They should give each greek one free dot xyz !
They will delay the release of the domains till next year.
It is only for marketing purposes.
Konstantinos, the sunrise period normally precedes the claims notification period. Since sunrise has passed for most Donuts TLDs before the 2 characters were released, we were unable to offer them during sunrise. However, we are able (and required) to put them through 90 days of claims as soon as they are un-reserved. There will be no additional sunrise period for these two-character names.
A few other corrections:
“But that has changed now. There will be a 90-day sunrise phase (has it started already?) specifically for these domain names.”
There will be a 90 day Claims period — not a sunrise period — starting on September 9, 2015 for the 2 character names that will become un-reserved on that date.
“I checked my notes from Domaining Europe in Valencia and I found that I was told from a Donuts representative that 2 character domains were not accepted by the trademark clearinghouse (correct) and there wasn’t going to be a sunrise for them (not correct).”
As of today there are 200 2-character labels in the Sunrise list of the TMCH, the first was entered April 8 2014, and the most recent was added July 4 2015. And it is in fact correct that there will be no sunrise period, only claims.
Thanks again for helping to distribute this information.
Will there be a sunrise for 2 character domains in the tlds launching from now on?
Fair question. I hope we’ll get an answer.
Is it possible to see which labels are registered with TMCH. Obviously those who registered their labels in first half of 2014 were serious about their marks. On the other hand late registrations might be suspicious/fake. I’m curious which label was first to be registered and how many 2-character labels have more than one applicant.
Once ICANN released the two characters, they were included in the Donuts’ TLDs that had an open sunrise. ICANN released the letter-number and number-number combos months ago, but some countries still have not approved the release of their corresponding country codes, such as India’s “in.”
Regarding the labels in the TMCH, those lists are not published for the public by the TMCH and we’re not allowed to share them.