If you've been following the news on domain names and the new TLDs ICANN is working on activating, then you've heard that .biz is one of them. This will cater, obviously, to businesses. What's new and interesting is the issue of how to keep someone else from beating you to your own trademarked name or slogan.
To try to solve this problem before it's a problem, NeuLevel (the company awarded the .biz TLD) is allowing businesses and individuals to fill out an "IP Claim Form." This is for trademarks that are registered or pending. You may also claim trademarks that are "common law" or use based, meaning that you are using this mark for so long that you probably have full rights to it, but you never applied for a trademark in any country. Unfortunately, this is not free. Each claim form costs around $90 USD, and must be submitted by 9 July 2001.
There are a number of benefits to investing in this claim.
- People trying to register a .biz names that conflicts with your trademarks will get a warning before they can complete their registration. This is different from TLDs like .com, where you could register something as obviously not yours as microsoft.org and nothing would stop you or even mention that this could mean trouble.
- If the person registering the domain name decides that they don't care about the risk of infringing your claimed mark, they can still register the domain name. You as the claimant will receive an email notifying you of this domain name registration that might conflict with your mark. That's nice!
- If you as the claimant choose to dispute this name, you sure can. As someone who has gone through the IP Claim process for .biz, you will receive priority treatment, or so they claim, and an automatic 30 day hold will be put on the new registration. This will keep the new domain name owner from using it.
One drawback is that this database of Intellectual Property Claims will only be used during phase 2 of the .biz launch, the "landrush" phase. This is the period where anyone can request a .biz domain name. So what they are really saying is, "Please invest $90 per mark now AND then during the landrush phase, please buy all the domains that are relevant to your mark. Once the registry goes live, we're not going to check, so any trademark problems are yours to discover and deal with." Therefore, for many of us, the landrush phase will be the CYA (cover your ass) phase where we're buying our names to keep others from buying them after NeuLevel isn't checking anymore.
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