Tencent is latest to challenge ICANN on fresh TLD objections

Firm lost legal rights objections for weibo domain names.

Chinese internet giant Tencent is the latest firm to ask ICANN to reconsider a fresh top level domain objection decision.

The firm is challenging the legal rights objections brought by rival Sina against its applications for .微博 and .weibo.

Sina was the only other applicant for these domain names. By winning the objections, it no longer faces other applicants and will likely obtain the top level domain names.

Sina claims trademark rights to the terms, but they are also common terms in China for micro blogging services (a la Twitter). Many micro blogging services call themselves by these names.

I’m not sure that the three person panel in this case (which included a dissent) got the decision right.

Tencent argues that this is one of many inconsistent rulings coming out of objection panels, in part since ICANN did not provide proper guidelines to the outside arbitration firms and/or they weren’t followed correctly.

Other firms to file requests for reconsideration with ICANN’s board include Commercial Connect, Amazon, Merck KGaA, Dish DBS, and Hotel Top Level Domain S.a.r.l.

Of all of the reconsideration requests, I’d say Amazon has the most legitimate gripe following a panelist determined that .通販, which is Japanese for “Online Shopping”, is too similar to .shop.