ICANN could have just prohibited registrars from doing this, but it seems like the neo-TLD thing is just a cash grab for them so they probably don't mind.
Aldo, if this was your trademark before buying the domain, are you sure you couldn't have used the ICANN trademark squatting process to seize it? That would have only cost about $1500. Some people look for trademark registrations to preemptively buy the .com domain (and then sell it back to you for $10,000+), but the ICANN specifically has a process in place to prevent this kind of extortion.
But getting a decent name is hard. We wanted something that was two syllables, not trademarked (trademarks are important when selling on Amazon, as we do), easy to spell if you hear it said, had a toll free phone number available (we have 888-VOLTIVE). That narrows things considerably.
> The parties acknowledge that the purpose of this Section 2.10(c) is to prohibit abusive and/or discriminatory Renewal Pricing practices imposed by Registry Operator without the written consent of the applicable registrant at the time of the initial registration of the domain and this Section 2.10(c) will be interpreted broadly to prohibit such practices.
From what I've seen, people typically tend to be confused about what they bought when you see threads like this. In the past several years I've never seen anyone produce documentation or screenshots that show they registered a non-premium domain that was reclassified as premium while they had it registered.
1. https://itp.cdn.icann.org/en/files/registry-agreements/sbs/s...