1. Deposits:
The act of pre-registering a domain is completely free. However, a week prior to the general availability date, HEXONET systems start reserving funds from a customer's account for use as a deposit. These funds are completely refundable and are automatically returned to the customer's account if a pre-registration is cancelled (not allowed during the last 24 hours before a general release) or if HEXONET fails to registered a pre-registered domain for the customer. If a domain is successfully registered for a customer the reserved deposit is used to process the registration. Please ensure that you account has sufficient funds in it to cover applicable pre-registrations deposits.
2. Previewing your Pre-registrations:
View your list of pre-registrations in the control panel by navigating to: Manage Products --> Pre-regs / EOIs --> List Pre-regs. While viewing the list, the 'status' column contains important information about the stage a pre-registration is in:
- REQUESTED: An application with a complete dataset, but not active yet (either we haven't collected deposits yet, or the account has insufficient funds).
- ACTIVE: An application with a complete dataset and a deposit, that will get executed against the registry, once the respective phase starts (unless deleted prior to submission).
- PROCESSING: An application that is in submission (or about to get submitted) to the registry and can't be deleted anymore.
- INCOMPLETE: An application with an incomplete dataset (e.g. unconfirmed claims, missing contacts,...). Will not become REQUESTED or ACTIVE, unless the user updates it and fixes the problem.
3. Claims Notice: (What to do if a domain has a TMCH Claims Notice associated with it)
The Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH) is ICANN’s mandatory rights protection system, requiring trademark(s) validation before registering for a domain in the sunrise period. This will allow companies to protect their trademark brand during the launch of the new gTLDs, and will be notified should a third party attempt to register a domain under the same trademark. The Trademark Clearinghouse monitors registered marks for Trademark Holders. Therefore, whenever a third party attempts to register a registered trademark, both the domain name registrant and trademark holder will be warned of possible infringements.
How the Claim Service Works:
- A potential domain name registrant gets a warning notice (claims notice) when attempting to register a domain name that matches a trademark registered in the Clearinghouse.
- If, after receiving and accepting the notice, the domain name registrant continues to register the domain name, the trademark holder will receive notification so they can take any appropriate action.
- This service is available within the first 90 days of General Availability.
Domains with TMCH Claims Notice Associated with It:
- You can check to see if any of your pre-registration have a Claims Notice associated with it by navigating to: Manage Products --> Pre-regs / EOIs --> List Pre-regs in the control panel. The entire row for a domain with a claims notice will be highlighted in yellow. (see screenshot below)
- If you would like to proceed with the domain registration, click on the Claim Notice listed next to your pre-registration and agree to the terms to acknowledge that you are aware of the trademark(s), and that to the best of your knowledge, your use of the domain name will not infringe on the trademark. **Please note that you can only confirm these notices 24 hours prior to the TLD going into General Availability.