Marika,

Can you please tell us what goes into the process of "rough T-shirt sizing?"  If I were to be in charge of that the first thing I would do is look at what will be required of the Applicant, calculate the estimated hours it would take to do each evaluation and figure out if there is anything else out of band.   I still would not have gotten to $5k - $10k as an estimate.

Perhaps if we understood what goes into your estimates, this would be more easily digested



From: Marika Konings <marika.konings@icann.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 5, 2025 9:22 AM
To: Jeff Neuman <jeff@jjnsolutions.com>; subpro-irt@icann.org <subpro-irt@icann.org>
Subject: Re: [SubPro-IRT] $5k - $10k Additional Fees for Brand TLDs?
 

Jeff, just to clarify, we are not proposing anything at this stage. We have only provided rough t-shirt sizing for each of these conditional evaluations to give some indication of where we currently think these evaluations MAY fall. As many of these are still going through the design process that will confirm what steps need to be followed to complete these evaluations and by whom, either by ICANN or a third party, only after we have gone through that exercise will we be able to confirm expected costs, together with the details around the work that is expected to go into these conditional evaluations.

 

Best regards,

 

Marika

 

From: Jeff Neuman via SubPro-IRT <subpro-irt@icann.org>
Reply-To: Jeff Neuman <jeff@jjnsolutions.com>
Date: Wednesday, 5 February 2025 at 15:15
To: "subpro-irt@icann.org" <subpro-irt@icann.org>
Subject: [SubPro-IRT] $5k - $10k Additional Fees for Brand TLDs?

 

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
    1. A physical copy of the trademark registration
    1. A copy of your registration policies (which would already be in the original application)
    1. 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).

 

  1.   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