All Aboard… the IDN Fast Track

Home / Blogs

All Aboard… the IDN Fast Track

	By Elisa Cooper Head of Marketing, GoDaddy Corporate Domains
	March 24, 2010 Views: 13,312 Add Comment

In addition to Egypt, Russian Federation, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia which had successfully completed the second phase of the Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) Fast Track Process earlier this year, ICANN announced today that China, Hong Kong, Palestinian Territories, Qatar, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand and Tunisia have also successfully completed the second phase.

ICANN’s IDN Fast Track Process was approved by the ICANN Board at its annual meeting in Seoul, South Korea in October of last year. The Process was designed to enable countries and territories to submit requests to ICANN for IDN ccTLDs, representing their respective country or territory names in scripts other than Latin.

Understanding how, where, and what to register in these new ccTLD IDNs presents a whole host of new issues—many of which have been overshadowed until now by the anticipated launch of the new gTLDs.

As with similar types of launches in the past, many of these ccTLD registries may allow for special “Sunrise” and “Grandfather” periods so that owners of trademarks and existing IDNs are given priority over others to register exact matches in the new offerings.

Registration periods for these new IDN ccTLDs will likely occur later this year and brand owners should begin preparing now by reviewing international trademark portfolio holdings and identifying important brands that should be promoted and protected.

To date, ICANN has received a total of 19 requests for IDN ccTLD(s) in the Fast Track Process, representing 11 languages.

By Elisa Cooper, Head of Marketing, GoDaddy Corporate Domains

Filed Under

Comments

The Weekly Wrap

More and more professionals are choosing to publish critical posts on CircleID from all corners of the Internet industry. If you find it hard to keep up daily, consider subscribing to our weekly digest. We will provide you a convenient summary report once a week sent directly to your inbox. It's a quick and easy read.

I make a point of reading CircleID. There is no getting around the utility of knowing what thoughtful people are thinking and saying about our industry.

VINTON CERF
Co-designer of the TCP/IP Protocols & the Architecture of the Internet