Hi folks, I believe I've found a "smoking gun", see below: On Tue, Apr 11, 2017 at 12:37 AM, Nahitchevansky, Georges <ghn@kilpatricktownsend.com> wrote:
To put it bluntly, there hea been no evidence presented that bona fide brand owners are abusing the TMCH system in order to horde common terms or stiffle free speech. At best, you have a handful of speculators that gamed the system to some extent. This might be a fix or a tweek to the existing regime, but should not be a wholesle questioning of the entire system. Let' move on already.
According to the launch schedule for the .DELIVERY TLD at: https://ie.godaddy.com/help/about-delivery-domain-names-12395 Sunrise period was from 12/2/14 at 16:00 UTC to 1/31/15 at 16:00 UTC, and EAP (Landrush) didn't begin until 2/4/15 at 16:00 UTC Consider the domain name FLOWERS.DELIVERY, registered to 1-800-FLOWERS.COM Inc., via DomainTools: https://whois.domaintools.com/flowers.delivery Its creation date/time was 2015-02-03T22:14:41Z, which was BEFORE the EAP/Landrush date, which is strong evidence it was registered in the sunrise period. [I'm aware that the date is after the close of sunrise, however, I believe that's because all the sunrise domains were created in a batch after the sunrise period was completed; that way, if there were multiple applications for the same string, they could be auctioned, etc.] Note that Yahoo.delivery was created at the same time (within a few seconds): https://whois.domaintools.com/yahoo.delivery Creation Date: 2015-02-03T22:14:58Z Once again predating EAP/Landrush (I'm confident that's a sunrise registration, as it would be cheaper than paying the Day 1 EAP price!). And it's the same date/time stamp as that of the US Postal Service's registration: https://whois.domaintools.com/usps.delivery Creation Date: 2015-02-03T22:14:26Z which once again, should have been a sunrise registration too. And in case anyone suggests that "maybe someone else gamed the system, and 1-800-Flowers.com bought it from them", the earliest WHOIS history record from DomainTools is dated 2015-02-04 (i.e. the next day) and is: https://research.domaintools.com/research/whois-history/search/?q=flowers.de... Domain Name: flowers.delivery Domain ID: 9f91e929ec1c4bc09eaeccd278f2652f-D WHOIS Server: http://www.whois.corporatedomains.com Referral URL: http://www.cscglobal.com Updated Date: 2015-02-03T22:14:41Z Creation Date: 2015-02-03T22:14:41Z Registry Expiry Date: 2016-02-03T22:14:41Z Sponsoring Registrar: Corporation Service Company Sponsoring Registrar IANA ID: 299 Domain Status: ok https://www.icann.org/epp#ok Registrant ID: 1800flower Registrant Name: Domain Administrator Registrant Organization: 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, INC. Registrant Street: One Old Country Road, Suite 500 Registrant City: Carle Place Registrant State/Province: NY Registrant Postal Code: 11514 Registrant Country: US Registrant Phone: +1.5162376000 Registrant Phone Ext: Registrant Fax: +1.5162376101 Registrant Fax Ext: Registrant Email: domainadmin@1800flowers.com This is evidence that cannot be ignored, and is likely just the tip of the iceberg. There you have it, a "smoking gun". I can see why some people wanted to "move on", to perhaps prevent us from digging deep to find evidence like this, not by a "handful of speculators", but by a large brand owner like 1-800-FLOWERS.com seeking to gain priority access to a common dictionary word that is descriptive to its entire industry. Sincerely, George Kirikos 416-588-0269 http://www.leap.com/