For the first time since August of last year, we have a New gTLD launch to report.
The Sunrise Period for .free, .hot and .spot will take place between April 2 and May 2 of this year. Only applicants that have registered their trademark with the Trademark Clearinghouse will be able to register domains in this period. General Availability is expected to begin later in May.
In the mid 2010s, these launches came fast and furious, often with several nTLDs launching in a given month. Relatively few delegated nTLDs continue to sit in waiting and the pace of launches has slowed considerably in recent years. Notably, Amazon is among the last registries still launching domains with some regularity. The most-recent launches were also from Amazon, namely .deal and .now in August 2024.
Each of .free, .hot and .spot have been delegated since 2016 and could have been launched years ago. We do not know why Amazon opted not to launch until now, but it wouldn’t appear related to a lack of interest. In particular .free was a hotly-contested domain name, with five applicants including Google vying for control.
Among the three TLDs launching this April, IP Twins advises special consideration to registering .free domains in Sunrise. Phishing websites will often promote giveaways, contests and other means for obtaining products and services for free. A URL consisting of the exact brand name under .free would be a credible web address for legitimate offers of this nature and thereby presents a logical domain for a phishing campaign.
.hot and .spot do not present such an obvious case for a defensive registration in Sunrise, but are still worthy additions to a more robust defensive domain name portfolio. Amazon’s application files are light on details of intended use, but .hot would produce a coherent URL for the sale of products enjoying a moment of increased interest, while .spot can be used as “place” and be applied in a URL with the meaning of “the place to find X.
If you are interested in securing domain names under these extensions, please reach out to your IP Twins account manager to be provided with pricing when it becomes available. We’re also happy to answer any questions on Trademark Clearninghouse to be resolved prior to the Sunrise periods.
