Internet Naming Co has acquired five unused dot-brand gTLDs and will relaunch them as unrestricted generics in the coming months.
The company, the Caymans-based successor to UNR, has acquired .diy, .food, .lifestyle, .living, and .vana from Lifestyle Domain Holdings, CEO Shayan Rostam told me today.
They were all dot-brands that were not used, but ICANN has already removed the dot-brand restrictions in their contracts, allowing them to be sold to a general audience.
The gTLDs moved to Tucows from Verisign’s winding-down back-end registry services platform this week, and INC is now waiting for ICANN to formally approve the registry agreement assignments, Rostam said.
“I’m launching these TLDs [as] unrestricted generics this winter, as our registrar partners are already aware,” he said in an email. “Startup launch plans will be finalized shortly after assignment.”
The acquisitions increase the size of INC’s portfolio from 11 to 16. The company launched with nine UNR TLDs — .click, .country, .help, .forum, .hiv, .love, .property, .sexy, and .trust — last year. It also runs .realty and .rest, according to its web site.
The five new acquisitions were originally owned by Lifestyle Domain Holdings, a subsidiary of a cable TV company that is now part of Warner Bros Discovery, which appears to be unloading its entire portfolio.
LDH earlier this year asked ICANN to terminate its contracts for .foodnetwork, .travelchannel, .hgtv and .cookingnetwork, and later for .cityeats and .frontdoor.
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