[gnso-rpm-wg] Action Items, Slides and Notes from the Working Group call held earlier today

[George Kirikos]

Hi folks,

I believe I've found a "smoking gun", see below:

On Tue, Apr 11, 2017 at 12:37 AM, Nahitchevansky, Georges
<ghn at kilpatricktownsend.com> wrote:
>
> To put it bluntly, there hea been no evidence presented that bona fide brand owners are abusing the TMCH system in order to horde common terms or stiffle free speech. At best, you have a handful of speculators that gamed the system to some extent. This might be a fix or a tweek to the existing regime, but should not be a wholesle questioning of the entire system. Let' move on already.

According to the launch schedule for the .DELIVERY TLD at:

https://ie.godaddy.com/help/about-delivery-domain-names-12395

Sunrise period was from 12/2/14 at 16:00 UTC to 1/31/15 at 16:00 UTC,
and EAP (Landrush) didn't begin until 2/4/15 at 16:00 UTC

Consider the domain name FLOWERS.DELIVERY, registered to
1-800-FLOWERS.COM Inc., via DomainTools:

https://whois.domaintools.com/flowers.delivery

Its creation date/time was 2015-02-03T22:14:41Z, which was BEFORE the
EAP/Landrush date, which is strong evidence it was registered in the
sunrise period. [I'm aware that the date is after the close of
sunrise, however, I believe that's because all the sunrise domains
were created in a batch after the sunrise period was completed; that
way, if there were multiple applications for the same string, they
could be auctioned, etc.]

Note that Yahoo.delivery was created at the same time (within a few seconds):

https://whois.domaintools.com/yahoo.delivery

Creation Date: 2015-02-03T22:14:58Z

Once again predating EAP/Landrush (I'm confident that's a sunrise
registration, as it would be cheaper than paying the Day 1 EAP
price!).

And it's the same date/time stamp as that of the US Postal Service's
registration:

https://whois.domaintools.com/usps.delivery

Creation Date: 2015-02-03T22:14:26Z

which once again, should have been a sunrise registration too.

And in case anyone suggests that "maybe someone else gamed the system,
and 1-800-Flowers.com bought it from them", the earliest WHOIS history
record from DomainTools is dated 2015-02-04 (i.e. the next day) and
is:

https://research.domaintools.com/research/whois-history/search/?q=flowers.delivery&date=2015-02-04&origin=permalink

Domain Name: flowers.delivery
Domain ID: 9f91e929ec1c4bc09eaeccd278f2652f-D
WHOIS Server: http://www.whois.corporatedomains.com
Referral URL: http://www.cscglobal.com
Updated Date: 2015-02-03T22:14:41Z
Creation Date: 2015-02-03T22:14:41Z
Registry Expiry Date: 2016-02-03T22:14:41Z
Sponsoring Registrar: Corporation Service Company
Sponsoring Registrar IANA ID: 299
Domain Status: ok https://www.icann.org/epp#ok
Registrant ID: 1800flower
Registrant Name: Domain Administrator
Registrant Organization: 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, INC.
Registrant Street: One Old Country Road, Suite 500
Registrant City: Carle Place
Registrant State/Province: NY
Registrant Postal Code: 11514
Registrant Country: US
Registrant Phone: +1.5162376000
Registrant Phone Ext:
Registrant Fax: +1.5162376101
Registrant Fax Ext:
Registrant Email: domainadmin at 1800flowers.com

This is evidence that cannot be ignored, and is likely just the tip of
the iceberg.

There you have it, a "smoking gun". I can see why some people wanted
to "move on", to perhaps prevent us from digging deep to find evidence
like this, not by a "handful of speculators", but by a large brand
owner like 1-800-FLOWERS.com seeking to gain priority access to a
common dictionary word that is descriptive to its entire industry.

Sincerely,

George Kirikos
416-588-0269
http://www.leap.com/