Managers of the dot-biz domain have set in motion the first steps of what may be the next great Internet gold rush.
On Monday, Internet registry NeuLevel launched Stage 1 of its five-month plan for doling out Web addresses in the soon-to-be-launched dot-biz top-level domain.
As part of that plan, NeuLevel and a network of independent registrars began accepting applications from businesses that want to make a trademark claim for a particular domain.
Although no one will get official rights to dot-biz sites until autumn, the claims process gives companies -- from mega-corps to mom-and-pop operations -- a way to prevent others from snapping up a trademarked domain.
"We know already that we're going to receive millions of applications," said Douglas Armentrout, NeuLevel's CEO, who is expecting the pace of filings for new dot-biz addresses to be much faster than anything that occurred for the dot-com domain.
"We need a way of managing that so there's protection for trademark holders and there's protection for registrants," he said.
Armentrout did not have figures for how many companies, as of Monday, had filed dot-biz trademark claims. Companies have until July 9 to submit claims.
As the clock ticks for trademark holders, domain registrars are falling over each other to offer services for companies that want to protect rightful dot-biz addresses from cybersquatters.
"We heard from our corporate customers that there was a lot of confusion," said Shonna Keogan, spokeswoman for Register.com, which is offering customers a $195-per-trademark "Brand Protection Plan" that includes multiple submissions.
VeriSign, which runs the dot-com domain, charges $89 for each claim submitted through its site. NeuLevel said it is charging registrars a maximum of $90 to process each claim but is giving discounts in many cases.
"Traffic to our website has just been tremendous," said Marcello Hunter, retail director for Network Solutions, the domain registration subsidiary of Verisign.
Like other registrars, he's gearing up for a deluge of applications in the next few weeks.
But while they're happy to take payment from trademark holders, no one is promising that such efforts will guarantee their customers the dot-biz address they want.
The way the process works, NeuLevel will accept claims only for the next 1.5 months. After that, it will open up the registration process to anyone who wants a dot-biz domain. When multiple registrants are vying for the same domain, NeuLevel will choose the winner randomly.
When a business gets awarded a dot-biz domain, NeuLevel will inform them if another company has made a trademark claim for that name. If there is a dispute over who has the legitimate claim to the domain, then NeuLevel will freeze the site for 30 days. It will leave it up to the companies themselves to resolve the dispute.
NeuLevel's procedure is quite different from the method for doling out some other top-level domains, such as dot-info, which is using what is known as a sunrise process.
Under the sunrise process, trademark holders can file domain-name applications during an initial exclusive registration period, but only for names exactly matching their trademarks. A cooling-off period follows, during which multiple trademark claimants to a domain name will be encouraged to work things out. If nothing is agreed, one company will be assigned the domain name by random selection.
Only after that point, according to the sunrise process, will the doors to the domain kingdom open on a first-come, first-served basis.
Steven Metalitz, a Washington lawyer who presides over an intellectual property committee at ICANN, believes NeuLevel's registration process is riskier than the sunrise process used by other registries.
"Basically, the dot-biz philosophy seems to be: 'We'll set some rules, but it's up to you to police them,'" Metalitz said, adding that the procedure will create a greater risk of cybersquatting.
Jeff Neuman, director of policy and intellectual property at NeuLevel, defended the registration system by pointing out that trademark owners themselves "are in the best position to enforce their intellectual property rights."
Because many domain-name disputes involve more than one party with a valid trademark claim, Neuman said, NeuLevel believed it is better not to assume the role of ultimate arbiter in such matters.
Partly because it'll take a while to work out all the expected disputes, the dot-biz domain won't go live until October.
In the meantime, the number of pre-registrations is well over a million, Armentrout said, and growing every day.
The fact that no one actually officially owns any of the dot-biz domains hasn't prevented speculators from bidding up the prices of a few coveted addresses.
On Afternic, an auction site run by Register.com, bidding for a few up-and-coming dot-biz domains is already well underway. The asking price for sex.biz, for example, has already reached $10,600.
Fears of retaliation from trademark owners may be keeping the price of other sought-after domains a bit lower. Afternic's asking price for Microsoft.biz, for example, is a mere $950.
NeuLevel, for its part, said it does not sanction the auction of dot-biz domains, and has provisions against buying domains merely for the purpose of reselling.
