How To Protect Your Brand In The New Domain Era

This core principle is something we preach at length here at SirsteveHQ.

In 2015, things are changing dramatically as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is altering the way we look at domains by introducing more than 1200 new domain suffixes with more than 1200 to come.

In prior years, one just had to secure the “.com” version of their brand and would probably be OK. Maybe the owner would register the popular “.net” domain and perhaps even “.org” but nothing beyond that was considered a priority.

But that’s no longer the case. Look no further than Google shelling out $25 million to secure “.app” and you’ll understand this isn’t going away anytime soon. In fact, we’re at the beginning.

The evolution presents a quandary that’s fairly obvious – with so many domain extensions available, which need to be registered?

BetaNews.com published an article, exploring this quandary and provided four things to consider with the new domains. We’ll recap those points below:

• Identify Which Domains Are Being Released, and When
• Identify the Opportunities
• Identify the Threats
• Protect Your Brand

Tips 1, 2 and 3 build to the fourth and most important one – protecting your brand.

The BetaNews.com author recommends you register your trademark in the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH). This is a database of registered trademarks setup by ICANN that offers protective mechanisms tailored to trademark holders.

This will give you the first opportunity to register new domains related to your trademark before new extensions are released to the public, which will help eliminate cyber squatting on a name infringing on your trademark. It will also make sure you are contacted if anyone else attempts to register a domain using your trademark.

You can read the full article by BetaNews.com at this link.

In conclusion, ICANN has created and problem and provided a solution. Now, it’s up to companies and individuals to take measures necessary to ensure they are protected.

We’ve made it easy to navigate through the most popular top-level domains and provided a tool to check their availability. You can then use the aforementioned steps to pick the ones you feel need registered and can seamlessly register them through the SirsteveHQ.com Platform.