.furniture
| Status: | Delegated |
| Type: | Generic |
| Category: | Industry |
More information: 
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.furniture is a gTLD that was proposed in ICANN's New gTLD Program. Donuts won the rights to the string over Uniregistry in a Private auction. The Donuts application succeeded and was delegated to the Root Zone on 23 April 2014, making Donuts the Registry Operator for the string.[1]
Background[edit | edit source]
Registry Operator[edit | edit source]
- Donuts (Lone Fields, LLC)- The company raised $100 million capital from numerous investors including multi-billion dollar venture capital and private equity funds and top-tier bank in support of its application for 307 new gTLDs, including .furniture. Its plan is to offer the TLD internationally to provide a unique identity for all parties engage in the furniture industry to utilize the Internet for economic growth. The company partnered with Demand Media to provide back-end registry solutions and AusRegistry to provide DNS services and DNSSEC.[2][3] This applicant submitted a Public Interest Commitment, which can be downloaded here.
Previous Applicant[edit | edit source]
- Uniregistry, Corp. - Frank Schilling, a domain name investor, formed the company and invested $60 million to apply for 54 new gTLDs including .furniture. The company partnered with the Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) to provide back-end registry solutions. The company plans to operate the .furniture domain name space neutrally and considers it a specialty TLD that provides a unique online space for entities engaged in furniture business and interested in creating an online identity using the .furniture TLD.[4][5]
Private Deal[edit | edit source]
In February 2014, it was reported that Uniregistry and Donuts reached a private deal which resolved a number of New gTLD string contention sets involving only the two companies. Although the deal coincided with a round of Private Auctions conducted by Applicant Auction on February 18th, neither companies immediately commented on the nature of the deal and Applicant Auction did not disclose the participants of its recent auctions. If the companies had participated in a private auction, it would mark the first private auctions that Uniregistry participated in, after the company initially questioned the legality of private auctions in the New gTLD Program.[6]
In the private deal, Donuts became the sole applicant for .furniture, .auction, and .gratis, while Uniregistry won .audio and .juegos.[6]
Contract Signed[edit | edit source]
On 20 March 2014 Donuts received a Registry Agreement signed by ICANN for .furniture after passing all the required processes needed to become a Registry Operator for the string.[7]
Delegation and Availability[edit | edit source]
.furniture was delegated to the Root Zone of the DNS on 23 April, 2014, completing the successful application for the string.[1]
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Delegated Strings, ICANN.org Retrieved 30 May 2014
- ↑ Donuts Inc eye popping list of 307 new top-level domains
- ↑ Application number: 1-1466-60532 for Lone Fields, LLC
- ↑ Uniregistry Corp. applies for 54 new top-level domains...
- ↑ Application number: 1-845-27313 for Uniregistry, Corp.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Uniregistry doing Private New gTLD Auctions? Company Deals with Donuts on Five Strings, DomainIncite Retrieved Feb 21 2014
- ↑ Registry Agreements, ICANN.org Retrieved 30 May 2014