There have been a whole lot of complaints from trademark owners that new TLDs could potentially cause massive amounts of cybersquatting.
Similarly, it could cost them tens of thousands of dollars or maybe much more to protect their brands in a variety of new TLDs when ICANN releases them. This whole debate sounds pretty interesting and the trademark owner contingent makes a good point about this.
Well, it would be a better point if they actually owned all of their brand names in existing TLDs, or if the ones they didn’t own were being cybersquatted in different TLDs.
I thought it would be interesting to take a look at some leading brands to see if their brand names were sitting unregistered, which I believe is what will happen for many new gTLD domain names. For instance, Xerox.sport hardly seems to be a domain name that would be coveted by cybersquatters.
Here are some unregistered brand names in various ccTLD and TLD extensions:
- HewlettPackard.tv
- NewYorkTimes.travel
- McDonalds.aero
- Intel.ac
- MercedesBenz.sc
- Gucci.jobs
- MorganStanley.im
- Xerox.fm
- Danone.la
- Motorola.name
- Disney.mn
- Budweiser.vc
- Accenture.bz
- Hyatt.ac
I see JPeterman.co is available (online catalog company)…you know, Elaine’s boss from Seinfeld…
Great point with many of the new domain extensions there will be no need for the TM holders to buy their names. If they want to they can or if someone starts impersonating them then they can take action. The best case would be for the names not to be sold at all or only sold to the tm holder.
Why should they pay all that money to register and manage those, when if and when any actually take off, the can just come and take them from whomever has them?
@ owen frager
Would probably cost less to hand register than a protracted legal or UDRP battle. However, my point is that if many aren’t protecting all that’s available now, why are they making such a big stink of future TLDs?
@Elliot,
I think you are making their point for them Elliot. As names proliferate, it becomes more and more difficult to protect the trademark and dilutes the value of the trademark. It is very analogous to what Ben Bernanke is doing with with endless printing of money … it continues to dilute the value of the money (or trademark in this case) that is already out there. The point is quite valid. ICANN is the domain industry’s Ben Bernanke.
Just goes to show you how worthless most of those extentions are.
I would like to see ICANN give some sort of exclusivity to these new TLDs at some point. How about .millionaire TLD that costs $1million to register, and there will only be 100 of them in the world.