Status: Delegated
Manager: Dominion Enterprises
Registry Provider: Afilias
Type: Generic
Category: Industry
Priority #: 488 - Dominion Enterprises (DERAutos, LLC)

More information:

.autos is a gTLD that was proposed in ICANN's New gTLD Program. The applicant and now Registry Operator is Dominion Enterprises (DERAutos, LLC). Their application succeeded and was delegated to the Root Zone on 22 May 2014.[1]

Four other applicants applied for a similar string, .auto.[2]

Application Details

"Dominion is a leading marketing services company serving the wide-ranging needs of many industries including real estate, apartments, specialty vehicles, employment, automotive, and travel, with over 3,000 employees located in 145 offices in 33 states and four countries. Its websites receive more than 17 million average monthly visitors and 279 million average monthly page views...

At the time of completing this application, DERAutos has identified at least two registration policies that are currently intended to be adopted prior to launch of the .AUTOS gTLD. The first is a DMCA takedown policy regarding violations of copyrighted material found within the .AUTOS gTLD. Dominion currently has a compliance program in place to promptly respond to DMCA complaints received in connection with hosting and other value-added services provided to its network of auto dealers. While this current program can easily be migrated to the .AUTOS gTLD for its launch due to the fact that all registrants are existing Dominion clients, this policy will likely require amendments when domain name registration services are expanded beyond Dominion’s existing clients.

The second policy will be an RPM that will allow trademark owners to challenge domain names initially reserved by the registry (e.g., generic and geographic names identified in Section 18.1.2). This process will be modeled after the dotAsia Pioneer Policies adopted by dotAsia in connection with its launch.[3]"

Contract Signed

On 09 January 2014 Dominion Enterprises received a Registry Agreement signed by ICANN for .autos after passing all the required processes needed to become a Registry Operator for the string.[4]

Delegation and Availability

.autos was delegated to the Root Zone of the DNS on 22 May, 2014, completing the successful application for the string.[1]

References