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I previously blogged (link here) about the efforts by the City of Las Vegas to partner with local company, Dot Vegas Inc. (?Dot Vegas?), over the creation of a new top-level-domain (?TLD?) ? .VEGAS (a new domain name address suffix that could be used instead of the more common TLDs of .COM, .ORG, or .NET). The City of Las Vegas chose Dot Vegas over The Greenspun Corporation, owner of VEGAS.COM, which had also expressed interest in being the provider of the .VEGAS TLD. The same post also highlighted the potential conflict looming between the City of Las Vegas and Clark County over who should be the only ?governmental municipality? in ?Vegas? benefiting from registrations of .VEGAS domain names. After all, most of the hotel and casinos that outsiders with ?Vegas? (including ?The Strip?) is technically in the unincorporated area of Clark County and not within the City of Las Vegas.

As reported today by The Las Vegas Review Journal (updated article here), Clark County commissioners voted today to endorse Vegas.com?s bid to be the provider of the .VEGAS TLD, thus setting up the battle between the City of Las Vegas and Clark County over who has the superior rights to the term VEGAS. Vegas.com has offered to pay the County $1.50 for every address registered under .VEGAS or 10 percent of the gross revenue, whichever is greater (in contrast, Dot Vegas? deal with the City of Las Vegas was for 75 cents per registration or 10 percent of the gross revenues from future registrations).

Once final rules are established by ICANN over these new custom TLDs (information and announcements on ICANN?s gTLD program can be found here) and assuming both companies move forward with their plans, the battle will move on to ICANN which will have to determine which ?governmental municipality? has the superior rights to ?Vegas.?

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