.car and cars not similar, .pet and .pets too similar!?

With the over 1000 requests for new gTLD’s, multiple applicants simply requested the exact same extension and others requested extensions that were actually very similar. As we reported earlier, ICANN already checked which requests they themselves found too similar and came to the surprising conclusion that only 4 were so similar that they could cause confusion. They clearly only cared about the extensions that were visually very similar (as if they only worried about which extensions could cause confusion for farsighted people) as they only retained hotels vs hoteis and unicorn vs unicom.

But applicants could themselves also start a procedure if they found an other application was too similar to their application. One applicant for .hotel for example started such a procedure against .hotels and an applicant for .car did the same thing against .cars. In both cases however, it was decided that the extensions weren’t confusingly similar. This has been contested a lot. There is indeed a reasonably clear visible difference. If you put .hotel next to .hotels and ask if they are the same, everybody will instantly notice the extra “s” in .hotels, contrary to .hotels and hoteis, where (depending on the font being used) the letter “i” can look very much the same (if not identical) as the letter “l”.

But this doesn’t take into account any confusion that could arise if you don’t put the two exactly next to each other. They certainly don’t pass the famous “shouted across a crowded bar”-test. If somebody tells you to browse to “www.paris.hotels” in the bar or by phone there is a very good chance of you eventually ending up on “www.paris.hotel”. The sound of “hotel” and “hotels” is very similar and your memory adds some extra confusion.

And strangely enough, this is exactly what was now taken into account when checking if .pet and .pets are too similar. Google (the applicant for .pet) asked the similarity to be verified and now, in the exact same circumstances as .car and .hotel, it was concluded that .pet and .pets are too similar because they sound the same and their meaning isn’t very far apart.

We can only assume this to cause yet more delays for some extensions, as rulings will now most certainly be contested.