Ruling: Amazon Can’t Own ‘.Amazon’

July 18, 2013 Leave a comment

July 17, 2013, 2:48 PM

Ruling: Amazon Can’t Own ‘.Amazon’

By Greg Bensinger

Amazon.com AMZN +0.59% is facing rough waters in its quest to claim “.Amazon.” Late Tuesday, a committee of the nonprofit organization overseeing the Internet’s top-level domain names (the ones after the final dot in a website name), recommended against allowing “.Amazon” to be controlled by the Seattle company. Amazon had hoped to win control over the domain as “a unique and dedicated platform for Amazon,” and as “a further platform for innovation” and, ultimately, to “support the business goals of Amazon,” according to filings it made with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN.However, ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee recommended against Amazon taking control of the domain, perhaps in part because of objections from Latin American countries served by the Amazon River, said Nao Matsukata, chief executive of domain-name advisory firm FairWinds Partners, who is attending ICANN’s meeting in Durban, South Africa.

“They said it would not be fair for Amazon to have control,” said Matsukata. “It’s a shame that this couldn’t be a more open process and less arbitrary.” Representatives for ICANN didn’t respond to emails or phone calls for comment.

A subsequent vote could clear the way for Amazon to take control of the domain name, though ICANN has historically followed the advice of its Governmental Advisory Committee.

Amazon said in a statement it is working with ICANN to reach a favorable conclusion, without elaborating. The company is seeking nearly 80 different top-line domain names, including “.kindle,” “.wow” and “.shop,” as well as several in Japanese and Chinese.

The company in March drew the objections of the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers and Barnes & Noble over its application for “.book,” “.author” and “.read.” Those groups said it would threaten competition.

Hundreds of companies are applying for top-level domain names, in some cases in competition with others, in the hopes that it will broaden the Internet past suffixes such as “.com” and “.edu.” The goal of many is to sell the words to the left of the dot in web site names to create addresses such as www.music.sell.

The ICANN committee also said “.Patagonia,” which is the name of a region primarliy in Argentina, should not be ceded to a private company. Outdoor clothier Patagonia had previously sought that domain.

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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