ICANN just posted on its site the withdrawal of two more new gTLD applications bring the total of withdrawn applications to 21.
ProMark Brands Inc. withdrew the only two new gTLD applications it had for .HEINZ & .KETCHUP.
.KETCHUP had a Prioritization number of 737, and HEINZ had a Prioritization of 1345.
It should be noted at this point, applicants still get 70% of their application back and that percentage drops to 35% after Initial Evaluations are released, which ICANN has promised to start releasing this month
Here is how the company described the applications:
“ProMark Brands Inc. (“ProMark”), a subsidiary of H.J. Heinz Company (“Heinz”), has filed this application for a .KETCHUP gTLD with the intention of bringing to market a trusted, hierarchical, and intuitive namespace for consumers to access content related to Heinz Tomato Ketchup worldwide.
Through a unified corporate approach, ProMark intends to submit two gTLD applications for the strings .HEINZ and .KETCHUP.
“The intended future mission and purpose of the .KETCHUP gTLD is to serve as a trusted, hierarchical, and intuitive namespace provided by Heinz and its qualified subsidiaries and affiliates, to Heinz customers, consumers of Heinz Tomato Ketchup, and Internet users.”
“ProMark will be examining other .GENERIC gTLD applications, as well as general market adoption, to determine short- and long-term potential use case options for .KETCHUP to most effectively support Heinz’s online marketing strategy as a leading global food products company.”
“ProMark intends to initially limit registration and use of domain names within the .KETCHUP gTLD to Heinz and its qualified subsidiaries and affiliates. This initial limited use will allow Heinz to establish its operations and achieve full sustainability. This limited distribution coupled with the other requirements set forth in Specification 9 of the template Registry Agreement is intended to exempt ProMark from its annual Code of Conduct Compliance requirements.”
“After Year 3, ProMark will evaluate whether opportunities exist to carry out the business strategy for the .KETCHUP gTLD through expansion that continues the sustainable operations of the registry through fee-based registrations to parties other than Heinz and its qualified subsidiaries and affiliates.”
ProMark currently plans a four-stage rollout for the .KETCHUP gTLD. This rollout is subject to change depending upon business, strategic, and industry factors at the time of each stage:
1. Stage 1
The initial stage of implementation of the gTLD will involve Heinz registering a limited number of .KETCHUP second-level domain names.
2.…
