We've been invited by ICANN to contract! TLD Registry is proud to announce to our many stakeholders and supporters that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers -- ICANN -- has at long last invited us to enter into the Registry Agreement contracting phase. This is the final big step towards the essential new Chinese TLDs to go live. ICANN has determined that our application for Dot Chinese Online (number 1-1940-42600)  has passed Initial Evaluation, is not currently in a contention set, does not have an unresolved objection filed against it, is for a string that is not referenced in the Governmental Advisory Committee's Beijing Communique, and is not currently subject to a change request*. So what happens next? Well, the next step will be that we will receive the Communications Information Request from ICANN, which we'll return to them, completed with pro-forma information, right away. After that, we will enter a short period of negotiation and shortly thereafter, we'll be on the final straightforward steps of our five year journey to make the Chinese web more accessible to Chinese netizens. Dot Chinese Online will available soon! Post written by Simon Cousins, TLD Registry communications director. * "Is not subject to a change request (a) for which ICANN has not yet approved or denied the requested changes and (b) for which the 30 day public comment period following posting of the amended application has not yet...

We're very proud to publicly release the latest version of our TLD Registry booklet.  This 12-page document replaces all earlier marketing and information collateral items, and covers all key aspects of our Dot Chinese Online & Dot Chinese Website gTLDs. We hope you agree with us that the new booklet is a great improvement over our previous materials.  Its due to our very high level of activity in the registrar channel in China and the world that most improvements have been made.  Registrars in China and around the world have helped us enormously to "fine tune" our positioning of Dot Chinese Online and Dot Chinese Website. We're releasing this new booklet on the opening day of ICANN 47, in Durban, South Africa, where the TLD Registry executive team is meeting all this week. If you're at ICANN 47 too, please call by our meeting room in the Hilton and say hey! Article by Simon Cousins, TLD Registry marketing and communications director. Please download the  TLD Registry booklet (download version English) or the TLD Registry booklet (download version Chinese...

Preliminary agreements to sell Dot Chinese Online and Dot Chinese Website domain names reached with ten leading registrars DURBAN, South Africa, July 14, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- European internet domain name registry TLD Registry Ltd and ten leading registrars have signed preliminary agreements to sell fully-Chinese domain names in the "Dot Chinese Online" and "Dot Chinese Website" global top level domains ("New gTLDs"). Sales and marketing activity will occur worldwide, with special focus on China, Hong Kong and Singapore. Of the ten preliminary agreements, seven have been signed in the last four weeks. TLD Registry CEO Arto Isokoski said, "The pace of newly signed preliminary agreements has exceeded our expectations. We're delighted to have welcomed so many new partners to the Dot Chinese Online and Dot Chinese Website team." TLD Registry Executive Chairman Taneli Tikka, said, "Our investors' and executives' confidence in Dot Chinese Online and Dot Chinese Website as the essential new Chinese TLDs has been validated by the excellent traction we've achieved in the sales channel." The two new Chinese TLDs will offer businesses and consumers more domain name choices and a unique opportunity to enhance their brands and businesses online. "The Dot Chinese Online and Dot Chinese Website TLDs are culturally relevant, linguistically correct and will dramatically improve the way the booming Chinese web operates," said Simon Cousins, TLD Registry Communications Director. He continued, "Our TLDs are of interest to businesses worldwide, whether they're serving Chinese people in China or Chinese communities around the world." "Tens of thousands of domain name resellers and millions of Chinese domain name customers are addressed with TLD Registry's marketing channel," said Isokoski. "The fully-Chinese domain names made possible by Dot Chinese Online and Dot Chinese Website will be popular with trademark owners seeking to protect and benefit brands, businesses looking to better serve their customers, and domain name investors." Pinky Brand, the domain industry veteran overseeing TLD Registry's channel sales said, "Our registrars universally view Dot Chinese Online and Dot Chinese Website as culturally relevant and linguistically correct TLDs. Channel enthusiasm is high." "All things going well with ICANN's final policy details, we expect our TLDs to go live in the October 2013 timeframe," said Isokoski....

We're pleased to announce the 2013-07 revision of our brand guidance booklet.  The TLD Registry Corporate Identity Guidelines (PDF 734Kb) can be downloaded from our Branding Kit page. The booket is of use to our many partners, including our registrars and their resellers, our business partners, and the printers and external marketing agencies we work with. It provides clear guidelines on the correct and consistent use of our various logos, typographical conventions, color palette and other key brand elements. We welcome feedback and comment on our branding work. Please feel free to contact us with any comments or requests! We anticipate another refresh of the CI Guidelines booklet in August 2013. Thanks for supporting our mission to bring a fully-Chinese web to China and the world! Article by Simon Cousins, TLD Registry's marketing and communications...

Given the large number of new generic top-level domain (gTLD) applications, we will divide and evaluate them in batches. The batching system is targeted to open at 00:01 UTC on 8 June 2012, and will close at 23:59 UTC on 28 June 2012. The target date for posting the batching order is 11 July 2012. The batching process will be used to determine which applications will be processed in the first batch, the second batch and so on. It will be done by: assignment of a timestamp, and the formation of batches. Timestamp assignments will be done using the TLD Application System (TAS). All applicants must use their TAS credentials to log in, read and accept the batching rules, indicate their batching preference, and select their target date and time. Once these steps are completed applicants should log back into TAS to hit the target time and generate a secondary timestamp. Users will have access to a testing feature to gauge the secondary timestamp system's response time. Batching formation considers an applicant's: (1) batching preference, (2) geographic region and secondary timestamp; and (3) contention among identical and "similar" applications. (1) Applicants stating a preference for "opting-out" will be placed last. (2) Geographic diversity is important in bringing more competition and choice into the domain name market. Applicants who opted in will be ranked within their geographic region (Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America/Caribbean and North America) by their secondary timestamp score. Then applications will be selected from each ICANN region using a "round robin" approach. This approach selects the best timestamp score from each region, one region at a time, on a rotating basis. If a region runs out of opted-in applications, the "round robin" continues across the remaining regions. This process continues until the batch is formed, with the opted-out applications last. (3) ICANN will then make preliminary determinations of contention sets based upon exact match. All applications in a single contention set are placed into the batch where the earliest application in the contention set is placed. Once the string similarity panel establishes complete contention sets, "similar" strings might be reassigned to an earlier batch. No applications will be demoted as a result of the promotion of others. This could result in a batch larger than 500. ICANN has taken care to provide a secure and stable platform for the batching system. Users will connect to the Citrix XenApp high-availability cluster and will then log into the batching system. Applicants will be required to agree to a set of Batching Rules, including an agreement that "ICANN reserves the right to delay an application to the last batch or to reject an application entirely if ICANN reasonably determines that...

1 June 2012 ICANN is pleased to announce that it is working with Deloitte and IBM on implementation of Trademark Clearinghouse services. The Trademark Clearinghouse will function as an information repository, offering authentication and validation services for trademark data. Trademark holders and gTLD registry operators will rely on the Clearinghouse to support rights protection mechanisms for the new gTLD space. The Clearinghouse is designed to be available globally, with capabilities for validating trademark data from multiple global regions. In accordance with the direction set by the community, the authentication and database administration functions of the Clearinghouse are separated. Upon the anticipated execution of final agreement(s), Deloitte Enterprise Risk Services (a department of Deloitte Bedrijfsrevisoren BV ovve CVBA) will serve as the authenticator/validator service provider, and IBM [International Business Machines of Belgium sprl / bvba] will provide technical database administration services. Both Parties will subcontract IPClearingHouse BVBA (aka CHIP) in order to facilitate theses services. Both providers are highly qualified, with significant experience, technical capacity, and proven ability to manage and support processes. About Deloitte: "Deloitte" is the brand under which her member firms offer a broad range of audit, consulting, financial advisory, risk and tax services to clients all over the world. In this respect, Deloitte's validation team has been provided the opportunity to manage several successful Sunrise validation processes for many ccTLDs and gTLDs, including but not limited to .ASIA, .TEL, .ME, .CO, .SO. About IBM: IBM is an industry pioneer and has deep and broad experience. IBM knows how to play the role of a strategic partner - one that will bring industry thought leadership to the table and proactively contribute to customers' business and IT strategy. IBM has one of the largest global infrastructures, which has led to economies of scale that is passed on to its customers. IBM's excellent IT professionals and ability to leverage intellectual capital has led to one of the most respected groups of IT skills in the industry. These service providers have been selected out of a process of consideration in accordance with the Request for Information issued 3 October 2011. Requirements for candidate service providers included: a demonstrated understanding of the issues concerning global intellectual property rights and the Internet, global capability to authenticate and validate trademark information, and experience designing, building, and operating secure transaction processing systems with 24/7/365 availability. ICANN has also sought candidates with a proven ability to manage and support processes in multiple languages, in addition to fulfillment of the technical requirements. ICANN is currently working with Deloitte and IBM to build and prepare for operation of Trademark Clearinghouse services to support the new gTLDs. Both firms will take part in the public discussion refining technical...