ICANN acknowledges that "the role of the String Similarity Panel is to assess whether a proposed gTLD string creates a probability of user confusion due to similarity with any reserved name, any existing TLD, any requested IDN ccTLD, or any new gTLD string applied for in the current application round". It seems more than a "probability" that consumers will be confused by singular and plurals. Sarah From: owner-bc-gnso@icann.org [mailto:owner-bc-gnso@icann.org] On Behalf Of Steve DelBianco Sent: Friday, March 01, 2013 6:50 PM To: bc - GNSO list Subject: [bc-gnso] Update: Contention sets for new gTLDs Wanted you all to see this. I think it will reflect poorly on ICANN's expansion of TLDs. ICANN hired an international expert panel to scour 1900 new TLD strings and determine which were confusingly similar, so they could be combines in the same contention set. This is to ensure we don't delegate 2 TLD strings that would confuse Internet users because they are too similar. I expected, for example, that the applications received for .hotel and .hotels would be in the same contention set, since it would be confusing for users to have both TLDs out there. (It would increase the cost of defensive registrations, too, since hotels would have to buy domains in both TLDs. ) After several months of careful study, ICANN's experts published their contention sets yesterday. (link<http://www.icann.org/en/news/announcements/announcement-26feb13-en.htm>) They "identified" 230 "exact match contention sets" where multiple applicants sought the exact same string. And they found just 2 "non-exact match contention sets" (unicom and unicorm; hoteis and hotels ) Unbelievably, they did not consider the singular and plural versions of key words to be confusingly similar. This means we will get new TLDs for both the singular and plural versions of keywords such as: ACCOUNTANT ACCOUNTANTS AUTO AUTOS CAR CARS CAREER CAREERS COUPON COUPONS CRUISE CRUISES DEAL DEALS FAN FANS GAME GAMES GIFT GIFTS HOME HOMES HOTEL HOTELS HOTEL HOTELES KID KIDS LOAN LOANS MARKET MARKETS NEW NEWS PET PETS PHOTO PHOTOS REVIEW REVIEWS SPORT SPORTS TOUR TOURS WEB WEBS WORK WORKS What are the implications for applicants? Well, let's take an example. The 2 Applicants for .GIFT just got a huge gift from ICANN when they were not placed in the same contention set as the 2 applicants for .GIFTS One of the 2 .GIFT guys must prevail in their "singular" contention set. They can then proceed to delegation, as they planned. Or they can negotiate to be bought-out by the winning applicant from the plural contention set ( .GIFTS ). In other words, many applicants dodged a bullet by escaping from contention with their singular/plural form competitors. My guess is they want to explore ways to monetize their good fortune. -- Steve DelBianco Executive Director NetChoice http://www.NetChoice.org and http://blog.netchoice.org +1.202.420.7482