.Club Announces Unlimited Name Blocking for TM Holders

The .Club Registry announced a new DPML-like service to help trademark holders prevent domain names from being registered with their trademarks in them. The new service is called the Trademark Sentry Unlimited Name Blocking Service, and it is outlined in a press release that was published this morning. The registry also shared a video explaining how it works:

In short, a company like GoDaddy can pay a fee to ensure no other registrant is allowed to register any domain name with “GoDaddy” in it in the .Club extension. This service would prevent domain names with “GoDaddy,” for example, to be registered in the .Club extension. The trademark holder could register domain names with the trademark, but other third parties could not. The Service is not retroactive, so current registrants would be permitted to keep the domain names they already have registered, although if a domain name expires it could not be re-registered by another third party.

I asked Jeff Sass, CMO of the .Club Registry, what happens if the registrant of a generic trademark applies. For instance, I asked what would happen if a company like Booking.com sought to prevent anyone from registering a [Keyword]Booking.Club domain name. Jeff told me the Service requires a trademark to be “fanciful” and meet a set of requirements outlined on the Trademark Sentry website. I think GoDaddy would probably qualify but Booking would not. One interesting aspect is that if a company like GoDaddy was able to get “GoDaddy” protected as part of the service, a generic domain name like GoDaddyGo.Club couldn’t be registered by a third party.

According to the FAQ page on the Trademark Sentry website, trademark holders can pay a fee of $2,000 per trademark for three years of the service. There is a $500 discount offered on the website, which is good through the end of September.