It should hardly come as a surprise. As the planned date for the release of the final version of ICANN's new gTLD Applicant Guidebook draws near (it is expected in advance of ICANN's Cartagena meeting in December), the calls for yet more delays can once again be heard.

The International Trademark Association (INTA) sent ICANN Chairman of the Board Peter Dengate Thrush and ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom a letter a few days ago requesting that yet another study be done before new gTLDs are rolled out!

The study should, they say, "assess the harms associated with intellectual property abuse and related forms of consumer fraud in the domain name system".

Thankfully, both Dengate Thrush and Beckstrom have lately made it quite clear that after several years of consultation and development of the new gTLD program, they feel that there has been ample opportunity for people such as INTA to get involved and have their say.

The Board has actually planned to concentrate solely on getting through as many of the remaining new gTLD issues as it can during its upcoming Retreat, on September 24 and 25.

Personally, I wonder whom INTA is really speaking for here. I know of several major corporations that are keen to get their hands on their own TLD and are growing very tired of the program's endless delays. And then obviously there are all the other entrepreneurs who have started on a TLD project and are loosing more and more money as delays stretch…