.academy

Status:	Delegated
Registry Provider:	Demand Media
Type:	Generic
Category:	Education
PIC Submitted:	Download Here
More information:

.academy is a proposed TLD in ICANN's New gTLD Program. The application was filed by Half Oaks LLC, one of the companies created by Donuts to submit its application. They applied for 307 total TLDs. According to the company, it is financially stable and it raised $100 million from various investors to support its registry operations safely, securely with world-class infrastructure and high-quality organizational management. The company partnered with Demand Media to provide back-end registry services. The proposed application succeeded and was delegated to the Root Zone on 17 December, 2013.

Application Details

Seemingly all of Donuts applications were applied for using the same boiler-plate application in which the TLD is defined as a means of providing greater expression on the Internet and will be an open TLD without pre-registration policies. It notes its plans to adhere with all registration policies required by ICANN and its intent to have remediation and takedown policies clearly defined to fit within these requirements. Pre-registration verification will not be used and this as defined as causing "cause more harm than benefit by denying domain access to legitimate registrants." They intend to control abuse through "extensive user and rights protections."

Objection

An official Legal Rights Objection was filed by Academy, Ltd., d/b/a Academy Sports + Outdoors against Donuts.

A Legal Rights Objection, as defined by the ICANN approved mediator, WIPO, is when, "third parties may file a formal objection to an application on several grounds, including, for trademark owners and Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs) [..] When such an objection is filed, an independent panel (comprised of one or three experts) will determine whether the applicant’s potential use of the applied-for gTLD would be likely to infringe [..] the objector’s existing trademark, or IGO name or acronym."

The objection was dismissed and Donuts prevailed, meaning they can continue with their application for the string uninhibited by the objection. The case was determined on August 16, 2013 and published by ICANN on September 25, 2013.

Contract Signed

On 07 November 2013, Donuts received a Registry Agreement signed by ICANN for .academy after passing all the required processes needed to become a Registry Operator for the string.

Delegation and Availability

.academy was delegated to the Root Zone of the DNS on December 17, 2013, completing the successful application for the string.

Sunrise

The Registry announced that the Sunrise Period for the string would begin 07 January 2014 and end on 08 March 2014.

Top-Level Domain