As anyone involved in the online space who has not been living in a cave for the last few years will know, we are currently involved in the biggest change in the topology of the Internet since its inception.
Over the next two years, over six hundred new generic names spaces will be made available in which to register domains, so the possibility to have yourbrand.clothing, yourbrand.london and yourbrand.app is very real.
The objective of this move is to give people and organisations the potential to build targeted sites with direct navigation to them so that, for example, a watch brand could, as part of a marketing program, direct consumers to brand.watch rather than some very long string that takes them to a subdomain of their .com site.
For smaller businesses or sole traders, the possibility of having yourname.guru, yourname.photography or yourname.legal (depending on profession) may be very attractive.
While this sounds a dramatic change, the whole programme was actually initiated by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) over six years ago and has been under debate since then. The eventual application process and rules have since undergone several iterations before it commenced.
It should therefore have been no surprise for brand owners when the first new name spaces opened up in the last quarter of 2013, but what seems to be the most challenging aspect for them is the speed and volume of new launches. Already more than 200 have launched this year and if one simply divides the 617 total by the number of working days in the next two years, it is easy to see that on average, one new registry will launch per day.
Clearly, it will not be that evenly spread and some periods will see much larger volumes than that. How then should brand owners deal with that?
Here are some recommendations to consider when dealing with this volume:
- If you try to consider each new space in isolation as it opens up, you are asking for trouble – the sheer volume and rate of launch will make it too hard to make the right decisions on the fly and your registration budget will very likely get out of control.
- The right approach is to take a look at all 617 new registries upfront and consider them in the light of your core branding and the geography of your business so that you can focus on the ones that are actually relevant to you.
- Use “blocking” – some registry operators have made it possible, for a fixed fee, to reserve certain trademarked terms across their entire portfolio of registries. In general, this is much more cost-effective than defensively registering in each of them. Once actual take-up is determined, you can selectively lift the block and register in those spaces where you wish.
- Have a monitoring process in pace. If defensive registration has been your main rights protection strategy, you will soon run out of money in this new world.
In terms of the launch process for new registries / name spaces, consider the following:
- The registry announces launch dates and what is known as a “sunrise period”, which is a window when owners of trademarked terms have the right to buy domains. In order to qualify for this your trademarked term has to be validated by the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH).
- At the end of the sunrise period the registry goes into what is known as “general availability” when anyone can register a name without the need for a matching trademark in the TMCH. At this point cybersquatters can join the game and register what may be attractive domain names that they will attempt to monetise.
- During the first 90 days of general availability, the TMCH provides what is called a “claims service” which notifies potential registrants when the domain they are seeking matches rights contained within the TMCH. The TMCH also provides notification to rights owners when an exact-match registration is made.
Brand Protection in a new gTLD World
Given all of this, it is clear to see that while these new gTLDs represent a significant opportunity for some brand owners to rationalise their domain portfolios and introduce some innovative concepts, there is a considerable risk of increased abuse and related customer confusion.
It is crucial for brand protection experts and brand owners to work together to determine where new registrations would make good economic sense, enabling them to budget for them and limit that to the areas of core usage and benefit. This also allows organisations to develop a plan to employ monitoring and enforcement techniques across the vast majority of the new namespaces.
The ‘monitoring and enforcement’ approach has the potential to deliver a more cost-effective solution to the risks that new gTLDs bring and allows brand owners to enjoy the potential benefits of the new namespaces to the maximum.
