Jeff,

That depends on whether ICANN will perform better verifications this time around. I know for a fact, being the RSP and consultant for a Geo TLD, that the Geo TLD Evaluation in 2012 was sub-par. Anyone could have said that the application had the support of city hall, and the contact provided actually didn’t work for city hall. While this wasn’t an issue since the application indeed had such support, I always hoped that this could be made better in the following round. 

So when I saw the same t-shirt sizing cost for GeoTLD evaluation, my first reaction was a hope that this would provide for better evaluation and verification. If it’s going to be the same, than it should probably have the same cost: none. 

That said, I believe the USD 155 TMCH fee is a good benchmark for the additional fee for gTLD evaluation and that the fee should match that. So while your USD 500 offer is better than the current price schedule, I believe the right price would be USD 155. 




Rubens


Em 5 de fev. de 2025, à(s) 11:14, Jeff Neuman via SubPro-IRT <subpro-irt@icann.org> escreveu:

In the last round, in order to get "Brand Status", the following needed to occur:

  1.     Applicant submits a Specification 13 application to qualify for .Brand Status.  This application consisted of:
    1. Agreement to Spec 13
    2. A physical copy of the trademark registration
    3. A copy of your registration policies (which would already be in the original application)
    4. The Trademark Clearinghouse's SMD file ID number.
In order to get your mark into the Trademark Clearinghouse, there is a $155 per year fee (with discounts for longer registration periods).  In exchange for that, the TMCH verifies the trademark and performs some functions with respect to the Sunrise Periods and claims services of ALL new gTLDs.

What does this mean?

  1.     It means that ICANN does NOT need to separately verify the trademark registration because that is being done by the Trademark Clearinghouse (FOR ONLY $155).

  2.   All ICANN needs to do is to (a) glance over the policies of the Applicant (which has already been submitted in the original application) to ensure that it says it will be used as described in Spec 13; and (b) Get a signature on Spec 13.
But ICANN is proposing a $5,000 fee?  This makes no sense.  Really ICANN should not be charging anything, but if it does want to charge, my small firm would be happy to provide this service to ICANN for $500 per application.  That would be 90% off of the lowest $5000 fee proposed by ICANN and 95% off of the high estimate of $10,000.

The above offer is serious as I am a qualified IP attorney.

Sincerely,

jeff


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