Economic Solutions Inc. (ESI), based in Florida, agreed in 1999
with the Government of Belize to market and sell the .bz
country-code top level domain (ccTLD) of Belize to international
applicants on the government’s behalf on condition that the
registrar pays a royalty to the government for each sale.
The agreement entered into by Belize is not the only one of its
kind. Through a multi-million dollar deal with the government of
Tuvalu, a small Pacific island nation, a company called dotTV
became the exclusive registry and registrar for the .TV domain.
ICANN is presently considering applications to control proposed
new global top level domains (gTLDs). At present there are seven
gTLDs of which only .net, .org and .com are publicly available.
Last Friday, ICANN announced that it was rejecting applications for
the gTLDs of .kids and .xxx. However, .biz was among those that it
is giving further consideration.
In a letter to Michael Roberts, ICANN’s President and CEO, ESI’s
lawyers state that ESI has, “expended considerable money and effort
in its preparations and marketing of the .bz TLD as a domain name
and has filed numerous trademark applications playing off the
phonetic pronunciation of ‘bz’ as ‘BIZ’ and the use of .bz in
connection with conducting business over the internet.”
The letter continues:
“ICANN's consideration and approval of an
application for a .biz […] TLD would create confusion among
internet users, interfere with the rights of ESI, and would cause
substantial damage to our client's rights and goodwill”
The letter also says that approval of a .biz TLD would be
contrary to ICANN's own criteria for assessing TLD proposals,
issued in August.
It adds:
“Since a .biz […]registrar would market
domain names to the same customers, its co-existence with the .bz
registrar would also diminish the value of domain names registered
with either the .biz […] or .bz registrars. This diminished value
would make it difficult for either .biz […] or .bz registrars to
successfully compete against other TLD registrars, thereby
frustrating ICANN's overall objective for expanding the list of
generic TLDs in a manner which preserves the stability of the
internet."
