.vip

Status:	Proposed
country:	International
Registry:	Registry Services, LLC
Registry Backend:	Nominet
Type:	Generic
Category:	Lifestyle
Priority #:	213 - Google (Charleston Road Registry Inc.) 503 - VIP Registry Pte. Ltd. 683 - Top Level Domain Holdings 743 - Donuts (John Corner, LLC) 1567 - I-REGISTRY Ltd., Niederlassung Deutschland 1804 - Vipspace Enterprises LLC
nTLDStats
Registrations:	866,741
Parked Domains:	621,502
Parked Domain %:	71.71 %
Important Dates
Delegation:	25 November 2015
General Availability:	17 May 2016
More Information:

.vip is a proposed TLD in ICANN's New gTLD Program. After an ICANN auction that occurred in September 2014, Top Level Domain Holdings (TLDH) became the only applicant for the TLD.

Current Applicant

1. Top Level Domain Holdings Ltd. - .vip is one of 68 applications that Top Level Domain Holdings Ltd. has filed for on its own behalf. This applicant submitted a Public Interest Commitment, which can be downloaded here.

TLDH & $15mm Auction Funding

On February 26 2013, Top Level Domain Holdings Ltd. announced that it had entered into a funding agreement worth $15 million to be used in the case of auction for a specific unnamed TLD. The investor will not receive ownership of the TLD but a share of future revenues. TLDH did not name the TLD that the funds are directed for, and it is in 11 head to head contentions and 12 featuring more than one contender.

Previous Applicants

1. Vipspace Enterprises LLC
2. I-REGISTRY Ltd., Niederlassung Deutschland
3. Google (Charleston Road Registry Inc.)
4. Donuts (John Corner, LLC), one of 307 TLDs applied for by the company. This applicant submitted a Public Interest Commitment, which can be downloaded here.
5. VIP Registry Pte. Ltd.

Objections

An official Legal Rights Objection was filed by the applicant I-Registry Ltd.., against all fellow applicants.

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."

ICANN Auction

In one of the first few public ICANN auctions to occur for the New gTLD Program that officially launched in 2012, TLDH won the rights to the string over the other applicants, who withdrew their applications as a result.

The auction occurred 17 September 2014, along with two other ICANN auctions for .buy and .tech. The winning price was $3,000,888 US Dollars. Unlike Private auctions, the winning price will not be split among the losing applicants, but will be held by ICANN and used towards a non-profit charity that is yet to be clarified.