The board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has approved an application for the .XXX generic top-level domain.
The application for .XXX received nine votes in favour and three against at the ICANN meeting in San Francisco on March 18.
ICM Registry made its original application for the gTLD in 2004. Despite being preliminarily approved by the ICANN board, the application was later rejected.
ICM appealed against this decision and an independent review panel found that “the Board’s reconsideration of that finding was not consistent with the application of neutral, objective and fair documented policy”.
The independent review panel issued its decision on February 19, 2010.
Peter Dengate-Thrush, chairman of the ICANN board, said: “I think that this is a testament to the accountability mechanisms that we have created. The panel found that the ICANN board had acted improperly in declining the application on certain grounds last time, and so the board has accepted that.”
ICANN and ICM must now agree on a contract before confirming ICM as the registry for the .XXX gTLD. The gTLD also has to be fully tested before it goes live.
Brand owners that wish to reserve their trademarks as .XXX domains will be able to do so under ICM’s sunrise programme.
The first stage will allow adult entertainment companies with registered rights to reserve their domains. Brand owners outside of the adult entertainment industry will then be invited to protect their trademarks before the gTLD is launched.
It is unlikely that .XXX domains will be on sale before June 2011, according to Nick Wood, managing director of Com Laude, a domain name management firm.
Wood believes that ICM has developed a rights protection programme of great value to trademark holders beyond the adult entertainment industries.
He said: “It offers the possibility of registering a term in perpetuity for a single payment—and very importantly, this term will resolve only to a standard white page created by ICM Registry indicating that the term is reserved through the .XXX rights protection programme. The corresponding WHOIS information will also contain standard registry contact details.”
He added: “This means that trademark owners who apply can be confident that their most important terms cannot be registered by third parties or associated with adult content.”
This article was first published on 01 April 2011 in World IP Review
ICANN, .XXX
