REGISTRY’S PERSPECTIVE
Verisign is responsible for the most memorable and most used top-level domain (TLD) of them all: .com. For any brand looking to do business online, securing names and marks to the leſt of the dot in the .com space is a must. But that could be about to change with the introduction of potentially any word into the domain name system when ICANN opens the fi rst new TLD application round in January 2012.
Sarah Langstone, director of product management for naming services at Verisign, does not believe that .com or Verisign’s less- celebrated TLD .net will be phased out should many jump on the .brand wagon.
“If you think about the industry at the moment, people tend to have complementary TLD names sitting side by side,” she says. “You’ll quite likely see brands with .com registrations and country- code TLD registrations, and there’s no reason why they can’t have their own TLDs as well. It’s really more complementary than anything else.”
Verisign does not appear to be afraid of the much-mooted competition that ICANN’s grand TLD plan will bring. “New TLDs will increase user choice, help to spur competition and therefore will help to grow the overall domain name market,” Langstone explains. “Choice is good thing. It enables innovative business models.”
Assigned names and numbers game
With January 2012 still a few weeks away, it is unclear just how popular the new TLDs will prove. Verisign reports that it is seeing signifi cant interest, particularly from brand owners, and perhaps unsurprisingly, interest in the new TLD programme gained momentum when ICANN fi nally announced in the summer that it was going ahead.
The application round for new TLDs is rapidly approaching. T
& BI talks to Sarah
Langstone of .com registry Verisign about what brand owners can expect if they decide to apply for a TLD.
www.worldipreview.com
Langstone says: “We’ve seen a marked increase in leads that are coming in and entities that have expressed an interest in applying. We estimate at this time that the number of applications that ICANN will receive could be anywhere from 1,000 to 1,500. Two thirds of those could come from brands. We’ve really seen a significant increase.”
Some commentators have suggested fi gures that are lower than Verisign’s estimate and speculated that ICANN may struggle to deal with any unforeseen increases in demand. However, Langstone says that she is confi dent that ICANN is adequately prepared for January 2012 and beyond.
Trademarks Brands and the Internet Volume 1, Issue 1 27
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