STRAAT pulls .movie application as it partners with another firm

Firm withdraws .movie application just ahead of initial evaluation results were to be disclosed.

For the second time in as many months, Nu Dot Co, LLC, a subsidiary of STRAAT Investments, has withdrawn a fresh top level domain application and partnered up with another applicant.

The latest application withdrawn was for .movie, which faced six competitors.

Last month it withdrew its application for .book.

“We’ve been working out the details of a strategic partnership with one of the other applicants, and that’s the reason we dropped it,” stated Jose Ignacio Rasco, CFO of Nu Dot Co. It dropped it just ahead of when the application would have gone through its initial evaluation, at which point the refund would have been less.

“We’ve got some interesting deals in the works, which is actually a fun part in this whole process,” he added.

Some applicants have formed partnerships to resolve contention sets, such as the one between Top Level Domain Holdings and Uniregistry for .country. Others, such as a three way tie-up for .online, still face competition from other applicants.

That’s the case with both .book and .movie, both of which face heavyweight competition. Amazon.com and Google have applied for both of these strings.