ICANN Announces Draw Results for New gTLD Applicants

    ICANN announced the results of the draw among applicants for the new top-level domains, held on December 17 in Los Angeles. Its result determines the priority of the final consideration of the application by the ICANN Commission and all further steps, up to the delegation of the domain.

    1766 of 1917 applications for new domains took part in the draw - an unexpectedly high percentage. 108 of them were applications for non-Latin domains (IDNs), for which ICANN decided to reserve first places in the queue . The winner of the lottery was a domain in Chinese registered by the Catholic Church - a translation of the word "Catholic". We also note the success of our application for .RUS domain , which received the 56th number - the highest number among applications from companies from Russia.

    ICANN will review domain applications in a manner determined by a draw. Its results will determine the procedure for delegation of domains that have successfully passed verification (legal and technical). The application may also be rejected due to similarity with geographical names or existing domains, or by decision of the ICANN Commission in the event of protests by the GAC or members of the public.

    Recall that ICANN plans to delegate domains in groups of 80 names per month. Therefore, the domain. РУС may become one of the first domains delegated under the new gTLD program. The process of delegating new domains will begin in April 2013, after the ICANN meeting in Beijing.

    It is worth noting that the fact that the overwhelming majority of applicants for new gTLDs took place in the draw emphasized some of the shortcomings of this system. ICANN organized an event in Los Angeles to weed out those who don't need to be among the first. But almost everyone took part, perhaps in order not to be at the very end of the line.

    As a result, community-requested domains such as .quebec (1404 number), .scot (1453 number) and .rio (1722 number) were in the back, and the first places went to many companies that have not yet decided on the policy of using their own domain or in general registered it only to protect their trademark.

    As Werner Straub notes, the Rio de Janeiro city domain may therefore miss the 2014 FIFA World Cup and even the Olympic Games in 2016.
    In his opinion, the authors of about 600 applications may be dissatisfied with the results of the draw, so ICANN should organize as soon as possible feedback from applicants so that domains claimed by large communities are delegated earlier, and corporate domains for companies not planning to actively use their domain later. You should also review the policy regarding applications for several domains: it seems strange when applications for names that designate the main goods and services of the same company are delegated every year.

    But ICANN did not provide any options for reviewing the draw.

    All draw results availableon the ICANN website .

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