Why are brands yet to wake up to the dawn of the new internet?

As this issue of WIPR went to press it was a few weeks since the sunrise periods for the first new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) ended and new domain names were allocated. In the first batch of seven gTLDS being operated by domain name registry Donuts, released in the last week of January, a number of brands decided to take the approach of registering their key terms in all of the seven. Six weeks on and it seems that most of the internet world is realising the opportunities the new gTLDs will bring—except, that is, the major brand holders who went to the trouble of using the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH) mechanism to secure their brands.