The internet's red light district is set to go live later this year. While hospitality companies may have effective protective strategies in place for generic top-level domains (gTLDs), the registrants of .xxx domain names must provide online, sexually-orientated content. So to avoid embarrassment, hospitality companies may want to tweak their standard approach and take advantage of the mechanisms put in place by the ICM Registry to protect trademark owners not involved in the adult entertainment world:
- At the beginning of a 30-day "Sunrise B" period, hospitality companies will be allowed to register defensive, non-resolving .xxx domains corresponding to their trademarks. "Sunrise B" would begin after a 30-day "Sunrise A" period during which adult entertainment companies get the first crack at reserving .xxx domain names.
- Right now, hospitality companies can use a free, no-obligation preregistration service whereby specific .xxx domain names can be "prerequested." Those who preregister will be notified when formal registration begins and will receive specific forms, details and procedures for filing defensive registrations during the Sunrise B period.
As the ICM Registry's FAQs don't provide dates for the beginning of either Sunrise period, preregistration would appear to be a sensible move. To test how easy this is, we preregistered www.hospitalitylawg.xxx at the ICM Registry "reservation page." We were greeted with this message:
We are accepting expressions of interest from non members of the adult industry for non-resolving names for trademark and Intellectual property protection. The[y] can be names you own in other TLDs or simply strings that match your non adult industry trademarks or personal names
From there, we filled in one of the twenty www._________.xxx blanks, hit "submit" and immediately received our "Name Reservation Conformation."
Although spelling doesn't seem to be a strength, ICM has put together a process that was quick and easy. We will keep you updated on how well preregistration works.