The Clock Is Ticking as .xxx Trademark Protection Ends Soon but There’s Good News for Brands

This highly successful program provided much needed protection to almost 70,000 marks globally and was widely regarded as the most intellectual property favorable launch of a new top-level domain.

However, with the ten-year term for all .xxx Sunrise B block holders rapidly approaching on December 1st, 2021, it is imperative that trademark owners understand the implications of letting their protections lapse and act immediately to migrate over to one of two significantly improved and upgraded domain blocking options being provided by ICM Registry.

Upgraded Domain Blocking Options

ICM Registry has designed two greatly enhanced rights protection options to replace the expiring Sunrise B blocks: AdultBlock and AdultBlock+. And in good news for trademark owners, these products have been extended to automatically include coverage across the three other adult-themed domain extensions currently available on the web: .sex, .porn and .adult.

AdultBlock allows brand owners to block the registration of exact-match trademark terms by unauthorized third parties across all four adult TLDs.

AdultBlock+ takes the core functionality of AdultBlock and maximizes the protection by extending coverage to include all look-alike registrations and typographical errors that appear confusingly similar to the trademarked term across all four adult TLDs.

AdultBlock and AdultBlock+ also extends protections more broadly and allow for the inclusion of unregistered or common law marks, company names and even celebrity names, in newly created blocks.

Holders of existing .xxx Sunrise B blocks simply need to contact their current domain name registrar and request that their rights are legacied into the AdultBlock service. Similarly, owners of a trademark validated by the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH) can order an AdultBlock product using those pre-validated rights.

AdultBlock+ Unlimited Blocking for Maximum Protection

AdultBlock+ provides brands with an exceptionally powerful tool to combat domain abuse and provides unlimited blocking of all additional look-alike names generated using the Unicode Consortium Standard. Unlimited blocking applies to all labels generated by the TMCH and contained within the Signed Mark Data (SMD) file.

This provides additional protection to rights owners, as look-alike variations are susceptible to abuse as they appear confusingly similar to trademarked terms.  With an average of three labels per mark and the scope for thousands of variations per name as a result of Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) script variants and homoglyph characters, phishers often use these look-alike domain names to confuse people.

With AdultBlock+, trademark owners do not need to choose which labels they want to protect.  Instead, they can rest assured that all labels and variants are automatically protected across all adult themed TLDs.

A typical brand name will bring up between 350 and 550 variants that will also be protected using the service (though the number eligible for protection is unlimited) and interested trademark owners can test in advance using the Trademark Variant Search tool.

Now is the Time to Act

Many of the Fortune 500 top 50 brands have already converted their Sunrise B blocks, others appear slow to realize the impending timelines and impact of letting the Sunrise B registrations lapse.

Failure to convert a Sunrise B into AdultBlock or AdultBlock+ by December 1st may find the marks available for registration by bad actors and given the importance of brand protection across the adult internet space, the majority of trademark owners are expected to take advantage of this new opportunity and protect their marks in one simple and effective product bundle.

Whilst for those that do not have a Sunrise B to convert, new registrations in AdultBlock and AdultBlock+ are also available today, with verifications undertaken by ICM Registry and its partners. To find out where you can purchase either of the AdultBlock products, simply click here.

According to ICM Registry, registrations can be created for 1, 3, 5 or 10 year terms, providing trademark owners with flexible options and noticeable cost savings for those seeking to invest in longer term protections.

By Tony Kirsch – Head of Professional Services, GoDaddy Registry

GoDaddy Registry acquired ICM Registry on August 11, 2021 and is committed to partnering with brand owners and the larger IP community to continue enhancing the AdultBlock and AdultBlock+ products.