Group’s IP attorney miffed that it couldn’t get bbb.xxx under ICM Registry sunrise process.
In planned testimony for today’s hearing about new TLDs in the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology on new TLDs, Council of Better Business Bureaus IP attorney Anjali Hansen said her group should have had first dibs on the domain name BBB:
Even more astounding was the fact that ICM Registry refused to accept CBBB’s registration of its most famous trademark “BBB†because ICM was allowed to reserve bbb.xxx as a premium name that it can later auction off to the highest bidder. We could not even defensively purchase our own trademark.
Hmm. I’m sure the American Automobile Association would love first dibs on aaa.xxx as well. But let’s face it: these are generic domain names. If you make your tradename a three letter acronym like this, you can’t expect it to be easy to protect your brand.
Another interesting claim from Hansen:
It is notable to consider the experience the CBBB had in the most recently opened top level domain, the .xxx TLD operated by ICM Registry for the adult entertainment industry. Any trademark holder that wanted to ensure that its trademark was not sold in that registry had to block it during the “sunrise†period. Otherwise, ICM could sell the trademark in domain names. In all, ICM and the registrars selling to .xxx have made a reported $20 million from such registrations to block over 90,000 trademarks that were filed during the sunrise period of that TLD. This has creating a unjustified financial windfall for an adult entertainment registry because trademark holders do not want to have their trademarks sold and abused in that TLD.
That $20 million includes domains registered to be used as adult sites, not just to block domains. The 90,000 trademarks being blocked number is wrong.
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