If the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) decides that the world needs a new generic top-level domain “.realestate,” the National Association of Realtors would like to be in charge of managing it. It’s created a subsidiary, dotRealEstate LLC, that’s applied to ICANN to create and manage a .realestate gTLD.
But three other companies that have also filed applications with ICANN to manage .realestate are still in the running, after NAR withdrew a “community objection” it had filed claiming that there was “substantial opposition” to the other applications “from a significant portion of the community to which the [.realestate top-level domain] may be explicitly or implicitly targeted” — in other words, NAR members.
NAR dropped its objections to competing claims for .realestate, and to two other applications to create and manage a new top-level domain, “.realty,” after the companies submitting the applications questioned NAR’s claim to represent the interests of all who might be interested in using the domains.
The Canadian Real Estate Association, which has an application in with ICANN to manage a “.mls” top-level domain, with the support of U.S. MLSs, in June lost a bid to throw out a competing application when an arbitration panel ruled that “MLS” is a generic term in English-speaking countries. Source: domainincite.com.
