Johnson & Johnson Wins .Baby For $3.09m & Canadian Real Estate Association Wins .MLS For $3.36m

Today the 17th of December 2014, an Auction conducted by ICANN’s authorized Auction service provider, Power Auctions LLC, was held to resolve string contention sets for two new generic Top-level Domain (gTLD) strings; .MLS, and .BABY.

String contention occurs when ICANN receives more than one application for the same or a confusingly similar gTLD. The applicants for these strings were unable to resolve the contention sets among themselves, and thus proceeded to an auction, which is the method of last resort to resolve string contention sets as prescribed in Module 4 of the Applicant Guidebook. Subject to payment of the Winning Price and meeting all other criteria for eligibility, the winner will begin the contracting process to sign a Registry Agreement to operate the respective gTLD.

The Canadian Real Estate Association prevailed in the Auction of .MLS with the winning price of $3,359,000 beating Afilias Limited.

Johnson & Johnson Services, Inc. prevailed in the Auction for the NEw gTLD .BABY with the winning price of $3,088,888. Losing applicants were:
Charleston Road Registry Inc. (Google)
Top Level Domain Holdings Limited (Minds + Machines)
Auburn Beach, LLC (Donuts)
DotBaby Inc. (Radix Registry)
Compact Registry Limited

In September Amazon got .Buy for $4.6m, M+M .VIP for $3m and Dot Tech .Tech for $6.8m.

All proceeds from the Auction are being segregated from use until the Board determines a plan for the appropriate use of the funds through consultation with the community. A detailed summary of the Auction proceeds and costs through the September 2014 Auction is available here, and will be updated with the latest information at the end of each month.

Additional bidding information is available in the Auction Reports which can be found on Auction Results page within the New gTLD Microsite.

Subsequent auctions are scheduled [PDF, 250 KB] to occur on a monthly basis into early 2015. The auction events are intended to resolve multiple contention sets simultaneously.