New gTLD Update – .Madrid, .Bank, .Insurance, .Taipei, .Club

Launch of new gTLD .MADRID

Operator of the new gTLD .MADRID, Comunidad de Madrid, has announced the launch of the extension. This is a semi-restricted Top Level Domain (TLD) therefore all holders must meet one the following requirements:

• Be a resident of the Community of Madrid
• Carry out occupational, personal, commercial or cultural activities in the Community of Madrid
• Be directly or indirectly related to the Community of Madrid

This is an end-date sunrise, therefore applications made between 16 July 2019 and 3 October 2019 will be given priority in the order shown, with Landrush applications being allocated last.

The launch programme is as follows:

Update to security requirements for .bank and .insurance

Registry operator fTLD periodically reviews its security requirements to ensure they are in-line with best practices for the financial services sector, helping to protect against security threats. fTLD has recently reviewed the requirements and modified them as follows:

• For web connections: TLS v1.2 or greater should be maintained and TLS v1.0 must be disabled.
• For other services: TLS v1.2 or greater should be used and TLS v1.0 does not need to be disabled at this time.

The Registry notified registrants about this change on 6 June 2019, and any necessary modifications to comply with the new requirements must be made no later than 5 September 2019.

.TAIPEI – Pricing Promotion

The registry operator for the new gTLD .TAIPEI, Taipei City Government, has announced that as part of its fifth birthday celebrations it will offer a pricing promotion on all new .TAIPEI domain registrations created from 1 July 2019 (00:00 UTC) to 31 December 2019 (23:59 UTC). The discounted registration fee will apply to single-year registrations and the first year of multi-year registrations. The discounted registration fee will not be applicable for premium domain names.

.CLUB announces name blocking service

The Registry operator for .CLUB, .Club Domains LLC, has announced the launch of their new blocking service called Trademark Sentry Unlimited Name Blocking Service. The purpose of the service is to protect ‘Qualified Trademarks’ by blocking corresponding domain names at registry level and preventing their registration by unauthorised third parties.

Qualified Trademarks are those which are registered at the USPTO and meet the .Club Registry’s additional requirements. Qualified misspellings of trademarks may also be allowed at the Registry’s discretion.

The effect of the block is that Qualified Trademarks are protected from being registered in any portion of a domain within the .CLUB namespace. If a domain name containing the Qualified Trademark is already registered then it will be blocked as soon as it becomes available for registration. Owners of a blocking subscription can request a specific name to be unblocked and registered for their own purposes (although they cannot be made available for registration by third parties) .