Is it time for a global policy, to be applied to the launch of new gTLDs?
Is it time to recognize that there's a body of trademarks that simply should not be registered, unless "it's the company itself"?
Google? DisneyWorld? Anybody?
Should famous mark holders have to incur an expense, everytime a new gTLD is launched?
How many times must the same parties have to participate in a "sunrise period"?
When will past experience, such as the launch of .info (false claims to generics, some of which are still unresolved) or the launch of .EU ("thin" corporations established for the purpose of asserting trademark claims) be applied to fashion sensible policies and procedures?
Should DisneyWorld or Google HAVE TO stake a claim or pay a fee - just to "protect their identity" as each new gTLD is launched?
[edited by: Webwork at 2:52 pm (utc) on Oct. 8, 2007]
Do you see any potential legal trap in their use of the the term "protect your identity", and their proactive contacting of the companies?
It almost sounds like an implied threat - I almost think I can read some small print between the lines:
"Register with us, or we'll give your name - which you have legal right to - to somebody else. You might get it back, but it will probably cost you plenty in legal costs. Cheaper to just register with us now."
Is it worth it to the registry to belabor the obvious and while taking the risk of calling their intentions into question?
I do have to say that I like the idea of the .asia however when I would actually find the time to build the sites I have no idea since I still have another 15-20 .eu's to complete yet apart from all the others I want to update.
Should DisneyWorld or Google HAVE TO stake a claim or pay a fee - just to "protect their identity" as each new gTLD is launched?
Actually I feel the problem is greater for companies such as ourselves that trade internationally yet are not a household name.
I would far rather pay an annual fee to a central registry to "block off" specific names across ALL gTLDs than have this bi-annual rush to try and secure those names from the evil name squatters.
Mycompanyname.eu was squatted and they've done absolutely NOTHING with it, not even a parked page! What's the point in that?
Back to the legalese.!.!.!
"If more than one applicant to the same domain passes the verification process, all successfully verified applicants will be invited to bid for that domain in an auction. Notification of the auction along with all information about competing bidders will be made available reasonably ahead of time to all bidders before an auction commences".
Gee, thanks, so if someone wants to try and squat my trade registered domain names I may end up having to pay a small fortune for them?
Only another 26 pages to go:-(
Should CompanyName have automatic rights to companyname.tld when one their trademark only extends to certain trading arenas.
There is no reason why Arthur Disney (assume no relation here for example purposes) who wants to start a company in PC Repairs should not trade under the name Disney, as there is no trademark infringement as his business does not compete in any way with the other corporation with the same name. He could even register the trademark in that name for his chosen line of business - PC Repairs.
Should he not also have rights to the name disney.tld
Another issue is that in order to give a company the right to make a claim against a name, some kind of legal infringement must have taken place - i.e. putting up a parking page and taking the Ad Income from ads for Trademarked Name. In owning the domain name you have not actually used the name for commercial purposes and therefore why should Big Co have a claim against the name, after all it is just a name.
"Protect Your Business Identity With .ASIA Domain"
I say Protect Your Business Cashflow by ignoring marketing attempts to create demand where none exists :)
[edited by: Hunter at 12:42 am (utc) on Oct. 9, 2007]
Asia may be one of the fastest growing markets in the world and it may well have some of the world's biggest future economies but does any of that really matter in terms of the .whatevers
.travel has not prosperped. Then again if tld's are like property perhaps we have to look at the very long term.
One thing I hate about all these new tld's is why can't I buy them at every major outlet. I own a lot of domains and do not want to have to deal with 2 or even 3 companies.
but does any of that really matter in terms of the .whatevers
I believe so.
My actual experience with my .cn and .in sites indicate that people perceive that they are dealing with the actual source for my products, in my case that actually are, however it would quite easy for anyone to set themselves up pretending to be a .cn, .in or .asia company when, in fact, they are merely a trading entity in .whichever country.
It's all about the marketing appearance and not the reality behind what is occurring, after all, does Joe Public company buyer really have any ethics and care about where their product comes from so long as it is of merchantable quality at the right price?
Some companies do but the vast majority only consider one factor, the bottom line, and if example.asia is offering a specific product versus example.com that is produced in Asia then 9 times out of 10 .asia should win if they know their strengths.
It's a tremendous psychological sales marketing game, that's all.
YMMV!
.asia, it just so happens to be the largest Internet market on the planet and will get bigger!
You seem to be confusing .asia with Asia itself.
My actual experience with my .cn and .in sites indicate that people perceive that they are dealing with the actual source for my products...
Of course they do. They believe they are dealing with a Company in China or India just as a .ca implies Canada and a .com.au Austrailia. Do you really find it necessary to have TLD's for continents? If the continent is also a Country then fine, but what would be the need of .NorthAmerica or .Africa or .Antarctica....please
BTW, the experiment known as .eu is not faring so well.
It's a tremendous psychological sales marketing game, that's all.
All the more reason to not get suckered into it
You seem to be confusing .asia with Asia itself.
Absolutely not, I am merely stating the fact that Asia IS the largest Internet market and will grow hugely.
Do you really find it necessary to have TLD's for continents?
For a continent I would agree that it is debateable however after our very positive experience with .eu then I would definitely say so.
BTW, the experiment known as .eu is not faring so well.
Are you referring to the EU or .eu?
I am not a political fan of the EU however .eu is definitely becoming popular amongst MY widget trade and they are not concerned with all the bellyaching we do here.
If it works they use it, and since it is not expensive, why not try it?
Absolutely not, I am merely stating the fact that Asia IS the largest Internet market and will grow hugely.
fair enough, but you phrased it like this:
.asia, it just so happens to be the largest Internet market on the planet and will get bigger!
Personally speaking, no matter where I lived in the world, I would'nt be thinking about typing in .asia unless it was a very well branded site and if it's very well branded, it could have any ext. so where's the need for .asia? Now, if you can pick up some great single word generics, well that's a no brainer, but good luck with that.
As far as .eu is concerned I'm glad it's working for you. I picked up a few good ones the day they went live and they haven't done jack diddly squat :)
When will past experience, such as the launch of .info (false claims to generics, some of which are still unresolved) or the launch of .EU ("thin" corporations established for the purpose of asserting trademark claims) be applied to fashion sensible policies and procedures?Well let's call those EU corporations by their real name - front companies. They were merely set up to abuse the poorly constructed legal and regulatory framework of .eu ccTLD. The reason that new gTLDs seem not to learn from the past experience of others is because too much money is involved.
A highly regulated gTLD would not do well initially and it would take many years for it to reach critical mass.
High levels of cybersquatting and domain warehousing inflates the number of registered domains thus making an otherwise incompetent management look good. They also makes the backers of a gTLD look good - the domain registration figures again. But most of all it makes money for the registry, the registrars, the domainers and the lawyers.
Regards...jmcc
It's a tremendous psychological sales marketing game, that's all.
And that's all it really is.
No doubt trademark holders want some kind of restrictions to ensure all those
evil cybersquatters (he he) won't be able to register those domain names. I'd
have to wish good luck on the .Asia Registry on realistically enforcing policies
dealing with that.
David
Is it time for a global policy, to be applied to the launch of new gTLDs?
I believe that you should be limited to one gTLD and only those ccTLDs for countries in which you have a significant locally-tailored business presence.
So, if you have google.com then you let someone else in another sector use google.org, just as a trademark is only protected within the defined sector.
A business does not need more than one gTLD domain name. ccTLDs are only intended for contact with that particular geographical region. If you don't have a company in canada, leave the .ca for someone who does.
I picked up a few good ones the day they went live and they haven't done jack diddly squat :)
Ah! Are you using them for "real" sites or what?
The .eu sites I have completed so far are doing very well however they are my trade widget business and I have to say that many in my global trade are very envious of the names I secured.
In reality my heart is in my trade however securing domain names for my trade promotions are very essential.
jmccormac>>>
Travelling around Europe businesses obviously do not look at these .eu abuses the way that domainers do no matter how much it was "screwed-up" in favour of false companies!
At the launch both of us were extremely critical, now I feel that those squatters will be usurped simply because companies will register alternative and equally applicable names.
If it gets to .co.uk or .de levels within 5 years I shall be surprised however, whichever way one looks at it, it looks damn good on a truck/letterhead:-)
I believe that you should be limited to one gTLD and only those ccTLDs for countries in which you have a significant locally-tailored business presence.
If all were fair in love and war! The reality is that there is always an "evil".
My companies are not household names however they are extremely well-known within my widget trade yet it is still possible for anyone to register themselves as "mycompanynameplusanappropriatewhateverextension", yeah, that's a long word, and then try and pass themselves off us "OUR" local office for that particular region!
Do you feel that is right?
170 years of business and someone, anywhere I do not have a local presence, can register MY trading names and potentially trade off my hard work?
We need a global domain trade name registry and the sooner the better!
170 years of business and someone, anywhere I do not have a local presence, can register MY trading names and potentially trade off my hard work?
Example.com could be selling worked solutions to exam questions, whilst example.biz could be selling example business models.
It would be unfair for example.com to have registered example.biz as that would have deprived the non-competing other company from having an appropriate domain name; but yet such abusive (aka defensive) registrations still happen.
Travelling around Europe businesses obviously do not look at these .eu abuses the way that domainers do no matter how much it was "screwed-up" in favour of false companies!Perhaps that's the .eu niche market HuskyPup. Many of the businesses that went to all that hassle of providing paperwork and money to the bunglers in Brussels during Sunrise 2 and lost their .eu domains to squatters would see it differently. EURid has currently suspended over 10K .eu domains belong to a proven Chinese squatter and from the list here, many of them are the names of European businesses and there is quite a few trademarks in that list as well. The affected small businesses would have been the core of a ccTLD but they were frozen out by organised cybersquatting and cyberwarehousing. That is fatal for a ccTLD. I still think that some of the squatters/warehousers took a major hit and have a very hard choice of holding on to their domains for the long run or cutting and running. Some domainers have complained that the traffic levels on .eu domains is almost non-existent.
At the launch both of us were extremely critical, now I feel that those squatters will be usurped simply because companies will register alternative and equally applicable names.I am still extremely critical of EURid and their record of incompetence. :) I did notice that many businesses who registered .eu domains point them back to their primary website (often a ccTLD or .com site). I did a survey of .eu websites in June (out of 2.2M doms, 1.78M were actively responding. The number of websites detected in the survey was 1.44M) and the usage of .eu was very low. At an estimate, there are probably less than 500K active .eu websites.
This low number of active websites is why any developed .eu website tends to do well.
If it gets to .co.uk or .de levels within 5 years I shall be surprised however, whichever way one looks at it, it looks damn good on a truck/letterhead:-)I still think it is artificially high and next April/May should see quite a few deletions now that registrars understand the Stone Age registry software and procedures. I would expect to see it following .biz (as seen over European hosters) at worst and at best, tracking .info numbers (again over European hosters). It would probably not get to the .co.uk levels though as .co.uk is a mature ccTLD. And .de level - only if the bureaucrats in Brussels decide to enforce it as a condition of doing business in mainland Europe. :) Apart from its pan-European identity niche, there is very little to recommend a .eu domain. The ccTLDs and .com still rule in Europe.
While EURid may try to portray the 2.6M .eu domains registered as a success, the reality is that when you break them down over the constituent countries and compare them with the relevant .com/net/org/biz/info/ccTLD holdings of these countries, it is way down the domain foodchain.
Regards...jmcc
