FairWinds Partners

Type:	Privately held
Industry:	Domain Name Consultation
Founded:	2006
Founder(s):	Josh Bourne Phil Lodico
Headquarters:	Washington, D.C.
Country:	USA
Website:	www.fairwindspartners.com
Blog:	gTLDStrategy.com
LinkedIn:	FairWinds Partners
Key People
Joshua Bourne and Phil Lodico, Managing Partners Steve Levy, IP Attorney

FairWinds Partners is a domain name consulting firm co-founded by Managing Partners Josh Bourne and Phil Lodico in 2006. The firm aims to help its clients to increase their revenue using their domain names, provide relevant information regarding the latest online technologies and opportunities, and help clients to protect their domain investments. Fairwinds Partners is located in Washington, D.C.

Joshua Bourne and Phil Lodico, also co-founded the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA), a non-profit advocacy group dedicated to combating domain name abuse by increasing people's awareness and encouraging Internet users and stakeholders to take action to be able to stop all illegal internet activities such as cybersquatting and trademark infringement.

FairWinds Partners submitted 107 applications to ICANN's New gTLD Program on behalf of its clients.

Services

Fairwinds Partners provides the following services to its clients:

• New gTLD Services
• Strategy Development
• FairWinds Intelligence
• Proactive Advisory
• Domain Name Recovery
• Outsourced Administration Solutions
• Domain Name Acquisitions and Divestitures
• Social Media Brand Protection Strategy and Services

ICANN Involvement

FairWinds is a observatory member of the Business Constituency within ICANN, and a voting member of the New TLD Applicant Group (NTAG) in the Registry Stakeholder Group, since they applied for .FAIRWINDS. The firm is represented by Stephanie Duchesneau.

In 2009, Mr. Bourne, who serves as President of CADNA, asked the United States government to conduct a full-scale audit on ICANN's structure, governance and oversight mechanisms. Bourne previously commented that ICANN failed to accomplish some of its responsibilities in the Affirmation of Commitments with United States Department of Commerce.

CADNA

CADNA and FairWinds Partners have at times seemingly been at odds, given that FairWinds is offering new gTLD consultancy services and CADNA has been leading an oppositional effort against the new gTLD program. This line has not always been clear, such as when FairWinds seemingly changed their approach to utilize their CADNA association to highlight that they are able to help brands defensively submit applications for gTLDs and Brand gTLDs. They explicitly noted that some brands should be choosing to apply for generic strings in an attempt to head-off any moves that their direct competitors may make for the same string; the brand could then choose to opt-out for a 70% refund should it find that its competitors did not apply and it is no longer interested in the string. FairWinds is not the only consultancy service that will likely profit from defensive registration, despite the fact that ICANN led an outreach effort to educate brands that defensive registration is not necessary. The widespread perception that defensive registration was necessary was seen as a failure on ICANN's part, and it was largely addressed only after the new gTLd program was approved and high level critics, such as when Secretary Lawrence Strickling of the U.S. Government, called on the organization to rectify the situation.