Company announces plans for .art and says it has trademarks for it as well.
Aremi Group is the latest to announce a formal application for a top level domain, announcing (pdf) that it has applied for .art.
The Luxembourg company says the mission of .art is to “provide a unique online space in which creatively-inclined members of the Internet community, individuals and institutions alike, can share their works and ideas with those seeking creative content.”
The more interesting thing to me is the notice on the bottom of the company’s press release:
.ART and DOT ART are trademarks of Aremi Group S.A.
Unauthorized use may result in violations of European or United States trademark law.
The company just applied with the European Union on April 23 for “.art” and “dot art” trademarks (the same day it registered the domain name YourDotArt.com). The company also told me it applied with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, although that application has not been posted yet.
Even more clever, the European marks claim priority to marks filed in Jamaica in 2011.
I’m telling you again, this sort of trademark issue is going to cause all sorts of problems for contested top level domains.
Karen Bernstein says
Interesting, Andrew. There appears to be no record of a DOT ART or .Art trademark application or registration in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, except one that was applied for back in 2000 and went abandoned.
Yourdotart.com was just registered on April 24, 2012 under Domains By Proxy. Unlike other European countries like Belgium, one cannot obtain a trademark registration certificate if the mark is not in actual use in the United States. Belgium is a first to file country.
rob sequin says
I know it’s your job to report the news and you do a great job at it but does anyone really care about this new extension or that new extension.
NO ONE cares as a percentage of the population or even as a population of the domain population.
Just one big money grab with ZERO long term value.
Maybe I am just getting too old for this crap but I’ve seen it all before… pop on launch then fade away to .cc land.
The only people who make any money are the registries and speculators who get in and out quick.
ZERO long term value and NOTHING added to the quality of life.
FarmerJohn says
.ART .AR .AT .ALT .ATT (OH GOD, DON’T STOP!)
It’s a beautiful world we will live in.
M. Menius says
Rob Sequin’s comments above are accurate I think. The majority of domain industry participants knew that “unlimited new tld’s” was an illogical proposition with many more negative factors than positive. There has always been an inherent flaw in the notion that more tld’s were wanted or needed by the public. And the single force pushing this lame concept forward was ICANN.
A relative few insinuated that moving the left side of the dot over to the right side would pose few problems or harmful implications. However, it’s contentious and problem-ridden already. The saving grace is that there is no real market for numerous new tld’s and there never was. The shame in all of this is that ICANN, entrusted to oversee the DNS, tried to cash in on the internet and its users, and were willing to compromise the accumulated organization & logic of the internet for an imagined windfall.
John UK says
I have been saying this for the past several years ,the battlefield is going to move in part away from UDRP and into trade mark laws as domainers ,hopefully, fight back and take lost UDRP’s to Court more and more. Unfortunately everytime a domainer fails to defend against a UDRP or loses so it makes it harder for everyone else when those lost UDRP’s are used again and again as “UDRP Case Law” even though they were wholly uncontested. I for one have sworn that I will take any and every UDRP threat or other cease and desist immediately to Court and name the threator as Respondent/Defendant to the proceedings.
John UK says
And added to that, the owner of the domain is a shell company with no assets.