.gea

Status:	Proposed
Registry Provider:	Afilias
Type:	Community Brand TLD
Priority #:	658 - GEA Group Aktiengesellschaft
More information:

.gea is a Community Brand TLD being proposed in ICANN's New gTLD Program. The applicant is GEA Group Aktiengesellschaft, which is "one of the largest system providers for food and energy processes... with a 2011 turnover of about € 5.4 billion and close to 24,000 employees worldwide." It and its predecessors have been publicly listed companies. Its principal place of business is Düsseldorf, Germany, and it has been involved in engineering and innovative technologies for over 100 years.

"The GEA community derives from the high-tech system provider GEA. The GEA community members are the GEA Group Aktiengesellschaft (“GEA”) and its globally affiliated companies...Community members are either fully owned by GEA or at least by a majority of 50,1 % shares." The GEA Group Aktiengesellschaft will be the only registrant for the TLD.

Letter to ICANN on String Similarity

Weeks prior to the announcement of the String Similarity Panel's decision, the VPs of the .gea and .ged bids sent a letter to ICANN imploring them to recognize the differences in their TLD regardless of any perceived visual similarity. THe results of the string similiarity panel had been long delayed and the lack of guidance or sense of direction for the results can be read into the move by these new gTLD applicants. They note that their scopes are entirely different, serving different niche industries, and that they will be operating close registries. This leaves little room for any overlap, they argue, writing "for any likelihood of confusion to exist, it must be probable, not merely theoretically possible, that confusion will actually arise in the mind fo the average, reasonable Internet user. Mere visual similarity is not a sufficient basis to support a finding of string confusion."