Will we see a .secure?
A Wisconsin company has filed an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to get the service mark “.secure”.
The application from Asif LLC says it will be used for “Domain name registration services”, which likely means the company is eying new top level domain names. It could also be used as branding for a domain name registrar.
The USPTO won’t let you trademark a top level domain name, although companies have tried to slip them past previously. Some new top level domain name applicants have trademarked their “dot-term” in an attempt to get a leg up on the application process. It might scare away competitors in the case more than one company is interested in the same top level domain name. One proponent of .music has stated that he will use his non-U.S. trademarks for .music if necessary.
Ah yes, I can’t wait till TM law breaks down and finally says; ENOUGH – You can’t own words anymore. Everyone that got their word, good job. Everyone else that missed out, please STFU GTFO and leave the internets 🙂
Beware…. On the future, you can not say anything… Everything is trademarked….. LOL….
I am assuming that you are referring to the .MUSIC trademarks and brand equity that we have created and will be expanding upon in the next few months. I think you were comparing apples with oranges here (.secure vs .MUSIC).
We have just launched the second installation of our outreach campaign for communicating to the music industry and artists about .MUSIC and how we will help the music industry with our platform and innovations.
We will be sponsoring, participating and be actively marketing the .MUSIC initiative in all the top music conferences and events which include:
New Music Seminar (New York, USA): 19-21, July, 2010
North Music Park Thing (San Diego, USA): 13-14, August, 2010 [SPONSOR]
Bandwidth Conference (San Francisco, USA): 19-20, August, 2010 [SPONSOR]
Popkomm (Berlin, Germany): 8-10, September, 2010 [SPONSOR]
Next Big Nashville & Leadership Music Summit: Sep 29-Oct 2, 2010 [SPONSOR]
Future of Music Policy Summit (Washington DC, USA): 3-5, October, 2010
Digital Music Forum West (Los Angeles, USA): 6-7, October, 2010
CMJ Music Marathon (New York, USA): 19-23, October, 2010 [SPONSOR]
Billboard (Los Angeles, USA): 27-28, October, 2010 [SPONSOR]
Miami Music Festival (Miami, USA): 12-14, November, 2010 [SPONSOR]
San Francisco Music Tech (San Francisco, USA): 6, December, 2010 [SPONSOR]
ICANN Meeting (Cartagena, Colombia): 5-10, December, 2010 [SPONSOR]
Midem (Cannes, France): 22-26, January, 2011
New Music Seminar (Los Angeles, USA): 14-16, February, 2011
Canadian Music Week (Toronto, Canada): 9-13, March, 2011
Harvard Business School (Cambridge, USA): 9 March, 2011
SXSW (Austin, USA): 11-20, March, 2011
ASCAP Expo (Los Angeles, USA): 28-30, March, 2011
Musexpo (Los Angeles, USA): 1-4, May, 2011
NARM (Los Angeles, USA): 9-12, May, 2011
Since ICANN does not protect us in no manner, shape or form, we will take any necessary measures to protect our interests and the brand equity we have built. The process should have launched already and we played by the rules and took ICANN’s word in regards to launch date a few times. How are credible initiatives such as .MUSIC protected despite the delays and promises?
We are out there for the benefit of the music community and as you can see we have not sponsored or will be attending any domainer event. It is just not our target demographic.
I think the article should put things in perspective. We have been out there for years, have amassed millions of supporters and literally are at every major music event or conference spreading the word and gaining more supporters and endorsers.
The trademark alone should not mean much if it was created for front-running alone. However, the brand equity that was created for the trademark does mean a lot. Just submitting a trademark application is just not credible or sufficient enough to warrant protection.
It is wonderful that you are quoting .MUSIC but the reader should have the whole story about what was said by .MUSIC and why it was said. You are not comparing apples with apples here. Nearly all potential applicants are not doing much about global outreach or creating brand awareness or out there with their community demographic.
We support musicians and out there talking to them and the industry. Would be great if other community applicants did the same thing and were as active as us spreading the word about themselves and ICANN. I understand what we are doing might lure competition but we have no problem with competitors if they choose to compete fairly and not try to confuse users with our initiative, (which will be difficult to achieve at this point I might add given the ICANN delays).
We do not rely on trademarks to win anything. However, it can be used to protect our interest if there is abuse and our brand equity created taken advantage of through gaming. Whether there is a trademark or not, the brand equity, recognition and awareness is a reality in what we are doing.
However, I do not agree with the concept of owning a TLD based on a mere trademark with no leg-work, zero credibility or failing to use that trademark in business globally.
Constantine Roussos
.MUSIC
Constantine,
Where do you get off spamming this site with your completely irelevant, off-topic message? Andrew, please remove that post; noone cares about it, nor do we want to buy what he’s selling. Some people…
I’m going to register .song, .songs, .bands, .band, .rock, .country, .blah, blah, blah, blah. Don’t these people get it?
With every new extension, .com just becomes more and more and more valuable. My fingers will never type anything with “.music” or “.secure” behind it. The internet is already cluttered – we don’t need more TLD’s or CCtld’s!
I only use my mobile apps anyway!
.music is now going to be an extension? Seriously?
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
For those of you not well-versed in web-speak, I was “laughing out loud”. LOLOLOLOLOL!
hey Viper,
I was being on-topic. Since Andrew called out .MUSIC, it is our responsibility to respond to it.
Our events just showcase that we are doing business as .MUSIC and we are out there promoting our initiative and building brand awareness for .MUSIC.
We have no interest in domainers buying .MUSIC addresses or parking them for that matter, so just illustrating the point that our responsibility is to do what is in the best interests of the music community.
The discussion thread is about trademarks and mentions .MUSIC. “Doing business as” your trademark name is what holds in court and makes it viable.
We are on-topic. The topic is not whether you like .MUSIC or not. The topic is about trademarks and ICANN, and how trademarks could be used to protect brand equity created. All I was indicating was how communication outreach, marketing and sponsoring music community events creates this.
So Viper, I apologize if you see this off topic. I thought it was on-topic and related. Especially if Andrew writes about .MUSIC. I believe it adds credibility and interest to the article if the company that Andrew mentions in the article responds and shares their viewpoint. I always welcome healthy discussion and constructive criticism.
Regards,
Constantine Roussos
.MUSIC
To Constantine Roussos from .stupid and .wannabetrademarktroll: I hope you sue, cause you will lose millions in lawyer fees.
Some brand equity you got, I just typed .music and nothing came up
Hey Anonymous Coward AKA “Sick and Tired of Stupid Losers”,
The search term “.music” is the exact same search term as “music” which is the most competitive keyword on the Internet based on number of music related combinations, volume and pages. We have been in the top 10-50 search results for the term “music” for the last year. We were #8 on Google for that term “music” in December 2009. We do have a screenshot of it as well.
We are in Germany right now sponsoring and speaking at the Popkomm music conference and are on page 3 for the term “music” out of about 2,730,000,000 Google German results. In the US we are on page 4. Google does NOT count “.” in their search by the way. I guess you missed that important distinction. top 40 out of 3 billion results for a domain based search and a fairly new company? I am sure it happened automatic without any work right?
If you searched for “dotmusic”, “music domain” “music tld” “music gtld” and anything with the term “music” and “domain” we are on top.
I suggest you conduct more research before you start bad mouthing people online as well as understand search engine basics 101 i.e that things like question marks, dashes, spaces and dots are neglected by search engines.
Best,
Constantine Roussos
.MUSIC