The Australian government has filed over 130 early warning notices objecting to applications for new gTLDs, well more than any other country.

The new gTLDs to which Australia has objected include .gripe, .sucks and .wtf – on the basis that they have an “overtly negative or critical connotation” and the applicant does not appear to have proposed sufficient mechanisms “to address the potential for a high level of defensive registrations”.

Australia has also objected to a large number of generic gTLDs.  These include descriptions of professions, such as .dentist and .doctor, on the basis that these strings are linked to “a regulated market sector” and the applicant has not proposed sufficient mechanisms “to minimise potential consumer harm”. Other generic gTLDs objected to include .city and .town, on the basis that these are generic geographic terms for which the applicant has not proposed sufficient mechanisms to protect the name and reputation of communities from misuse.

Other countries have objected to specific geographic gTLDs: Switzerland to .swiss (by Swiss International Air Lines), Argentina and Chile to .patagonia (by Patagonia, Inc.), and numerous African countries to the .africa (by DotConnect Africa Trust).

Applicants can follow up the early warning notices with changes to their applications to address the governments’ concerns, or withdraw their applications and save 80 percent of the US$180,000 application fee. Alternatively, they can go forward and risk getting blocked by an official objection later in the process.

Steptoe & Johnson report on program developments, upcoming deadlines, and potential enforcement options, including development of strategies to detect and deter possible infringement, following from the October ICANN meeting in Toronto.

Nominet, the organisation that manages the .uk top-level domain, has refused to order the transfer of the domain name <opticalexpressruinedmylife.co.uk> to the owners of Optical Express DCM (Optical Holdings) Limited.

RPC reports that Nominet found that the domain name was not an abusive registration, since its purpose was the genuine criticism of Optical Express.

This decision differs from an earlier Nominet decision concerning a Ryanair criticism website <ihateryanair.co.uk>, as to the degree to which a registrant’s commercial gain can taint an otherwise good-faith registration.

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice recently ruled that the elements of the tort of passing-off in the context of internet domain names were established in Dentec Safety Specialists Inc. v. Degil Safety Products Inc.

As Oslers reports, athough this is not the first case to consider passing off in the context of domain names, it sets out a useful summary of principles gleaned from the authorities.

The UK domain name authority, Nominet, has commenced public consultations on opening the UK domain name space to 2LD registrations.

Under the Nominet proposal, called “direct.uk”, businesses with a UK address would be allowed to register <theirname.uk>, instead of the 3LD registration <theirname.co.uk>.

The proposal is that a 2LD .uk registration would come with daily monitoring for malicious software and viruses, and a digital signature which minimises the risks of a domain name being hijacked. According to Nominet, these measures would be supported by “a trustmark to give consumers a clear sign that it was a verified domain name”.

The UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has determined that use of a misleading domain name to link to an advertisement infringes advertising standards.

The Complainant, the National Health Service (NHS), alleged the ad was misleading because the URL “www.nhs-services.org.uk” implied a link with the NHS.

Although the ad included text stating “This website is not connected to or affiliated with the NHS or any government department”, the ASA concluded that the use of the term “www.nhs-services” in the URL implied the advertiser was the NHS.  Because that was not the case, the ASA found the ad was misleading.

According to ICANN’s recently-published “roadmap”, the earliest any new gTLD will be delegated is August 2013.

ICANN cannot delegate more than 1,000 new gTLDs per year due to constraints on scaling the Root Zone. Thus, it requires an ordering of the applications for new gTLDs, either at the Evaluation phase (called batching) or at the Pre-delegation phase (called metering).

ICANN will develop a metering process to help handle the large number of gTLD applications that have been filed, with the intention of implementing it by the end of 2012.