Grounds of opposition:
- String confusion – risk of confusion with an existing string. TLD registries in particular may invoke this reason.
- Legal rights. Legal rights may be invoked by the respective rights holder, for the time being trademark holder. We would be pleased to advise you of the applicable criteria regarding your legal right and thus the chances and risks of any objection to a new gTLD that has been requested.
- Limited public interest.This reason for objection particularly concerns IGOs.
- Community.All communities may register an objection if they prove the existence of the community. Various factors are taken into account here. For this reason, with string contentions, i.e. two or more identical applications, a new TLD in this regard has already been triggered by withdrawals. This particularly applies to .swiss. The SWISS airline company has withdrawn its application in favour of OFCOM2. Rightly, for the reason of community, OFCOM would actually have good prospects of success.3 The withdrawal was made after OFCOM issued a GAC early warning to SWISS.4
If anyone feels that their rights have been infringed, they would be well advised to clarify whether they have any prospect of a successful objection. The latest date for submitting an objection to a new gTLD is 13 March 2013.