Another single-TLD brand protection service planned
BestTLD is planning to introduce a trademark-blocking service covering its single new gTLD, .best.
The company has asked ICANN for permission to launch what it calls the Best Protection service, which would provide domain blocks in lieu of defensive registrations in .best.
The service is similar to Donuts’ Domain Protected Marks List and other industry offerings, but is perhaps most comparable to the Trademark Sentry offering .CLUB Domains came up with a few years ago.
While DPML lets brands block their marks as domains across Donuts’ entire stable of almost 300 TLDs, BestTLD’s offering, like .CLUB’s, focuses instead on blocking marks as a substring in a single TLD.
In other words, Facebook could subscribe to the service for the string “facebook” and it would block domains such as “facebook-login.best”.
A good thing about such services from a registry’s perspective is that, unlike domains, the same string can be sold multiple times to different owners of the same trademarked string.
The registry has filed a Registry Services Evaluation Process request with ICANN and said it is ready to launch with back-end provider CentralNic whenever it gets approval.
Pricing was not disclosed, but if .CLUB’s $2,000 tag is any guide one might expect a super-premium fee.
Regular .best domains sell for about $20 a year and over 30,000 have been registered to date.
If you find this post or this blog useful or interestjng, please support Domain Incite, the independent source of news, analysis and opinion for the domain name industry and ICANN community.
Recent Comments