New gTLD process: brand owners beware

Jonathan Bailey, of Plagiarism Today fame, has a post over at the Blog Herald: “Why We Don’t Need More Domain Extensions“.

As of last month, 4 new gTLDs had already been approved but more than 1,000 have made it passed the “initial evaluation stage”. Private auctions for new gTLDs where there is more than one applicant are starting.

The new gTLDs aren’t here yet but scary as it is, this is going to happen.

So, if you are a brand owner – or advise brand owners – and you haven’t been thinking about how you are going to deal with this, Jonathan’s post really serves as a timely warning to get your thinking cap on:

  • are you going to try and register any (and if so which) of your trade marks in any of these new gTLDs?
  • what steps are you going to take, if any, to make sure someone else is not registering one (or more) of your trade marks in one of these new gTLDs?

 

ICANN’s new gTLD timeline.

ICANN’s current status of applications listing.

Searchengineland’s take.

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