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6 December 2018Trademarks

In the spotlight: Cooperating with the TMCH

InterNetX

“Constantly keeping an eye on the domain market is quite a laborious task,” says Jeanette Heller, senior manager registry operations at InterNetX, a domain name company based in Germany.

She is speaking in light of the new generic top-level domain (new gTLD) programme, which has changed the landscape for brand protection.

This approach may be laborious, but it is inevitable if brands want to carry out online trademark protection properly, she adds.

With around 900 new gTLDs currently on the market, registration of domains as a preventive measure has become more necessary than ever, but although the new gTLD programme has required a new approach to online brand protection, there are positives too.

Heller says the increased number of domain extensions available to companies has made it easier for them to find domains matching their brand.

“If a company or a brand uses domains with different domain extensions, the hit rate in search engines usually increases substantially,” she adds.

In addition, use of particular TLDs such as .tech, .game or .bank to specify the area in which a company operates offers additional marketing possibilities.

Specifically, the increased number of domain variants on the market allows companies to use particular domains for an entire marketing campaign. This offers the advantage of better promoting the campaign, as internet users are more likely to type the particular domain name into the browser bar.

“The companies can benefit from a direct way of addressing potential clients—independently from search engines,” she concludes.

“On one hand, the new gTLD programme has become an important means to protect trademarks online,” says Heller.

“But on the other hand, the enormous number of new domain extensions makes it quite complicated for brand owners to get through all required actions,” she explains.

Elaborating on the new brand protection challenges, she says that one of the biggest difficulties is the constraint of resources. This makes it difficult for companies to implement brand protection strategies and keep pace with the rapidly changing demands on the market.

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