The Guggenheim, the Louvre, the Pompidou Center and now ArtMarket all Possess a “.art” Generic Top-level Domain (gTLD)

thierry Ehrmann: “We are also very pleased to inform shareholders and investors that we now possess artmarket.art, which has already been deployed by our IT department. This acquisition involved several quarters of intense legal and administrative red tape with the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) and the TMCH (TradeMark ClearingHouse).

This is the same strategy adopted by all of the world’s major art institutions, including the Guggenheim, the Louvre and the Pompidou Center, along with an impressive list of museums that have played a key role in art history.

Since our press release Artprice.com is changing its name to Artmarket.com to become a global player in the Art Market posted on July 9, 2019 (follow this link:https://www.actusnews.com/fr/ARTPRICE/cp/2019/07/09/artprice_com-is-changing-its-name-to-artmarket_com-to-become-a-global-player-in-the-art-market) our Investor Relations department has received numerous questions from shareholders and institutions regarding the domain names we possess and our marketing position vis-à-vis Artprice.

This brief statement is intended to answer these questions. To achieve the getting of this extension .art, Artprice had to comply with a battery of draconian ICANN tests, including the requirement of owning our brand (without which applications to the ICANN are rejected). The “Sunrise Period” of domain registration is now over, so no further surprises are expected.”

A generic top-level domain (gTLD) is a type of top-level domain (TLD) maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) for use in the Internet’s domain name system.

A TLD is the extension at the end of a website address. In this case, “dot art” (.art) is a major asset for the key players in the art market. The ICANN, the organization that oversees Internet domain names, has developed draconian mechanisms to protect rights on new extensions and to preclude hacking risks.

However, this type of protection comes at a high price. In the digital economy, .art represents a powerful search-engine marketing tool to capture an even broader global audience. Concrete operational examples are louvre.art, guggemheim.art and centrepompidou.art.

thierry Ehrmann: “You don’t need an MBA to understand that this global network will inevitably contribute to our notoriety and the growth of our customer base.”

Very few groups like ours have a legal and IT department dedicated to the global watch of their brands and domain names. For our shareholders, this watch represents a guarantee and a very high level of legal security.”

thierry Ehrmann: “Artmarket.com is now the group’s flagship as we project our know-how, our content and our brands into the global market in a way no other entity operating on the Art Market can do. The new name will take full advantage of the natural indexing by global search engines of any content relating to the term “art market”.

Artprice.com shareholders will very shortly be invited to an EGM (within the legal deadlines) to approve this name change.

The Artprice brand – which has enjoyed global recognition for over 20 years – will remain the reference brand name for Artmarket.com in its highly profitable art prices /indices databanks activity.

After approval, shareholders of Artprice.com on Euronext will automatically become shareholders of Artmarket.com without any impact on the number of shares held or their attached rights.

English is the language most used by the art market all over the world.

Searches using the term “art market” on Google.com give Artmarket.com as the top result out of 3.6 billion results (Judicial Officer’s Report, SCP Pons-Mergui). By comparison, a search on Google.com using “Artprice” produces 2.5 million results, with, of course, artprice.com in first place.

To answer the questions we are currently receiving in all transparency, we acknowledge our legal possession of the domain names, artmarket.net, .org and .eu (.eu being the gTLD for Europe) as well as art-market.com, art-market.net and art-market.org which we acquired to preclude cybersquatting (the practice of registering a domain name corresponding to a trademark with the intention of subsequently reselling it to the trademark at a high price).

thierry Ehrmann: “Some new  complementary and decisive information will be  communicated in the Q2 release on the EGM (Extraordinary General Meeting) retroplanning which will endorse the change of artprice.com name to artmarket.com adding the new strategy artmarket.com to become a global player of the Art Market.”

SOURCE Artprice.com