January 8th, 2012 
admin 
What You Don’t Know About Protecting Your Brand Identity
What if suddenly you found your business trademarked name coming up under .XXX in addition to .com, .net or any other TLD domain? What if your brand was listed with millions of other business names competing in the adult entertainment market online? You do know that any of us can take any name and go buy their domain, right? I know you don’t run a business in the adult entertainment industry or a site with pornographic content, but your domain can show up there unless your Registered Trademark is protected. It’s what we don’t know that can hurt us. Most people do not know about the ways their brand can be in jeopardy or what the term TLD means or (Top level Domain.).
So, now that I have your full and complete undivided attention there are some facts you must know. The TLD .xxx officially launched live on December 6, 2011. The deadline to retrieve your name and pull it from the pool was October 28, 2011. The big question is, should you take any action to be proactive, and what can you do? Well, From September 7, 2011 and through Oct. 28, 2011 was the period allowed to take action, if you had planned to do so. There are some precautions you can take to prevent your brand from being tainted, but there is no guarantee.
The problem is most of the business world and online small businesses knew nothing about this new monster arriving on the scene. If your corporation is Trademarked and registered with the Federal Government, you can file to block anyone from using that mark with the .xxx extension as a domain name.
Through your domain registrars such as Network Solutions and Go Daddy etc…businesses with a Registered Trademark could have payed a one-time fee to block the future use of their name with the
.xxx extension. This would have been done by completing and submitting an application. This process would protect your business name from being included in the list of available names when selecting the .xxx domain.
In order to be eligible to take advantage of the blocking system you would have to have the following criteria met:
- Your company must have a valid trademark that was registered prior to Sept. 1, 2011.
- The trademark owner must be able to prove up its ownership of the mark through a federal trademark registration or equivalent foreign registration
- You need to prove you do not intend to use the .xxx domain name to participate in the adult entertainment industry.
- This process must be completed by Nov. 2, 2011 at 12 p.m. ET.
Now, what do you do if your company name or business is not federal trademarked, but you still want to protect it from someone in the adult entertainment industry from grabbing your domain name
and buying a .xxx TLD? After the live launch date of December 6, 2011 when the XXX TLDs are available for the general public one can then go and purchase a current domain name joined to the XXX TLD. This will be first-come-first-served, which means that someone could beat you to the finish
line and register your company name.
Although you don’t necessarily want your name showing up at all on the list, it is better that you have control over this to protect your brand online. What is the worst thing that can happen if you do nothing at all? Probably nothing at all, but it depends if you want to take that risk with your brand identity.
copyright 2012 Shelley Costello
