Community, Industry & Reverse Prior Rights Verification for New gTLDs
November 18, 2013, Buenos Aires – Namesphere and IP Metro will team up to offer customized Sunrise Clearinghouse services for New gTLDs.
“The standard new gTLD Sunrise by ICANN offers priority registrations to only a very limited subset of stakeholders. In order to establish a strong foundation of growth for a new gTLD, additional Sunrise mechanisms must be put in place customized for the target industry, community and brands that best exemplifies the use of the TLD,” says Edmon Chung, CEO of DotAsia Organisation. “Leveraging the experience from DotAsia, with one of the most successful Sunrise processes in the past, we are excited to support Namesphere in their delivery of more comprehensive Sunrise verification processes, policies and consultancy services for upcoming new gTLDs.”
Namesphere (http://www.namesphere.asia) is a spin off from DotAsia Organisation specializing in Front-End Registry Services for new gTLDs (and ccTLDs). IP Metro (http://www.ipmetro.com) has extensive expertise in trademark and prior rights protection and verification in domain names.
Beyond the limited trademark Sunrise, Namesphere and IP Metro will jointly offer to new gTLDs the possibilities of developing special Sunrise and prior rights verification processes as well as providing related consultancy services customized for each specific new gTLD. Many new gTLDs are focused on particular industries, communities or verticals. The ability to allow for special Sunrise processes not only provides the protection to the industries and communities which the new gTLD intends to serve, it also helps develop usage, awareness and traffic for the growth of the new gTLD.
“The aim of this service is to offer something that is far more versatile than what is currently commissioned by ICANN for the launch of new generic top-level domains,” says Bart Lieben, one of the founders of IP Metro. Mr Lieben has designed and directed the launch processes for many of the top-level domains that have launched over the past decade, including .EU, .MOBI, .ASIA, .TEL, .ME, .CO and .SO. “By teaming up with Namesphere and DotAsia, we will not only be able to leverage the knowledge from the tens of thousands of prior rights already validated in previous TLD launches, but also be able to put this work back to use for the community.”
In addition to community and industry specific Sunrise and prior rights verification, Namesphere and IP Metro will also offer to so-called "brand-TLDs" a reverse verification service. This is a new innovation which would serve to provide safeguards and risk assessment to brand-TLDs (or TLDs operated by brands owners) against inadvertently developing and using second level domains under their own TLD that potentially infringes upon prior rights of others.
In addition, the IP Metro platform will offer a benchmarking platform for gTLD and ccTLD registries, which will allow them to obtain real-time information that will help them in strategizing about their offering, pricing, processes and policies.
For inquiries please contact us at info@ipmetro.asia.