Since the Sunrise period began, EnCirca has collected data on the most common errors that cost trademark owners money because they are paying multiple fees and spending extraneous time reapplying.
According to .XXX Registry policy, once a Sunrise application is submitted, it cannot be corrected without paying an additional fee to the registrar.”
The most common errors are:
Owners are dropping the .com: Many trademarks include a “.com.” These letters cannot be dropped from the trademark for .XXX. So, a trademark such as “example.com” is eligible for “examplecom.xxx” but not for “example.xxx.”
TIP: File an amendment 7 with the USPTO to have it removed. There is still time to do this before the .XXX Sunrise concludes.
Trademark owners are submitting ineligible trademarks: If you are registering through other registrars, you will pay a fee even though there is no hope of having a successful registration. Use EnCirca if there is any question about the validity of your trademark and take advantage of EnCirca’s pre-validation service and don’t pay any registration fee if your application is rejected.
Owners are trying to register domains that are not an exact match for their trademark: Oftentimes, a trademark registration will include additional characters than the actual brand name. For example, it may include a slogan or tag line. However, this can be problematic for domain registration as the desired domain names are shorter than their registered trademark.
TIP: There is a fall-back for these trademark owners – apply under Sunrise AD using a pre-existing domain name. The eligibility for joining the sponsored community is very broad and includes any service providers or companies that might supply product or services to either “providers” of adult entertainment or to their “representatives,” such as lawyers, agents, advisors and accountants.
EnCirca offers a money-back guarantee for trademark owners applying for the .XXX Sunrise period.
EnCirca is guaranteeing that submitted applications will be accepted by the validation agent or EnCirca will offer a full refund of fees paid.
Sounds like a logistics nightmare if all have errors…
How do they determine WHO get’s a particular one – if they come in
on the same day – and do they ever show – verify timestamping upon
request… ??
~Patricia Kaehler – DomainBELL
@patricia:
For trademark owners applying to block a name, it doesn’t matter whether one is first, or tenth, the result is that the domain name is blocked, and it remains that way. These types of blocking applications render the domain name non-usable and non-registrable to any party.
But, in general, the result here is unsurprising. These people specifically go through the trouble to register something as their trademark, and then they want to expand the scope of what they actually have registered. If there are characters which they did not want to use or register as their trademark in the first place, then they had that choice to make when they filed their application.
The entire point of trademark registration is to provide notice of what, exactly, is the mark. If they believe something else to be their mark, then why did they register what they did?
Amazon has just released its FIRE tablet (and two new Kindle readers, too)
thisismynext.com/2011/09/28/amazon-kindle-fire-vs-ipad-2-vs-nook-color-numbers/
Yet another ICANN success story in the making.
This would be the sTLD .XXX – Sponsored TLD
Looks like simple software-based solutions will serve the market “better”
ICANN does not seem to believe the free market forces will route around them
if they are so confident that their mark is confusingly similar to these domain names they want to block, then why worry about convincing the .xxx registry? surely, the courts will side with them. they can just use the legal process to resolve the matter.
this is a preview to the future of any new gtld’s. whoever said icann is created by and for lawyers is correct in this regard. they are very good at promoting disputes through ambiguity.
an exact match string matching system (and perhaps other approaches to matching to which existing trademark law has never been applied) is not going to satisfy trademark holders.
what does encirca say if a registrant asks to block a subdomain? e.g., example.com.xxx
to a court reviewing a trademark dispute, is example.com.xxx any less confusingly similar than examplecom.xxx? seems like it’s even more so.
Here come the typosquatters.