Just a few dozen second level domain names for new TLDs have been registered so far. Yet it looks like people are already typosquatting on them.
Last week .Club Domains LLC, the company that’s launching the .club top level domain name, bought nicclub.com for $3,500 on Sedo.
Anyone who has been following new top level domain name delegations will immediately recognize this as a defensive move for what will become a typo of .Club’s first second level domain name, nic.club.
When a new top level domain name is delegated, the registries are using nic.TLD as their first website. For example, Frank Schilling’s Uniregistry already has sites up at nic.tattoo and nic.sexy. When I went to NicClub.com yesterday, it had what I imagine is the company’s soon-to-be website for nic.club.
Some people unfamiliar with new TLDs will end up typing in nicclub.com or nictattoo.com instead of the correct domain name.
Nicclub.com was originally registered in 2001 and then more recently in 2011, so I doubt the seller had the .club domain in mind when it registered the domains.
But it got me curious, so I looked up how many “nicTLD.com” domains have been registered for the 30 Latin-script top level domain names that have already been delegated.
The answer: 16 have been registered, and 9 of them were registered just this year.
One Ontario man registered six domain names this month, including nicsexy.com, nictattoo.com, nicgraphics.com, nicphotography.com, and nicguru.com. All of these correspond to recently delegated top level domain names. I can’t be sure what his goal is. I left him a message and will update this story if I hear back.
The group behind .Uno smartly registered nicuno.com this month.
Looking down the list of recently signed new TLD contracts (for domains that haven’t been delegated), many other nicTLD.com domain names have been registered this year. This isn’t a coincidence.
In the long run, I doubt many new TLD operators will use nic.tld as a primary marketing site. Still, it’s interesting to see that people are already snapping up what could be considered typos of second level domains under new TLDs.
Joseph Peterson says
That’s the primary problem with second-level registrations in most of the new TLDs. They constitute only half a name and, without the matching .COM, are incomplete.
Acro says
The use of “nic” isn’t mandatory; a registry can easily operate from domains.tld or any other domain name, therefore securing the compounded .com first.
shaul Jolles says
Andrew, this is actually us (.UNO registry owner) that registered nicuno.com. Shaul Jolles
Andrew Allemann says
Correct – that’s what the story says. Let me know if I’m missing something.
Scott Alliy says
huge gray area. One of the main selling points for new GTLDs is defensive proactivity. Yet not many of the new dot extensions are spending the $8 to cover their bets and their butts. So my company owns about 50 dot[gtld]domains.com yet we are in the aftermarket domain business sooooo, is that cybersquatting or not? And more importantly should not the guys who are promoting the benefits of domain ownership (albeit theior own domains) engage in the same practices of proactive protection that they are urging potential buyers to do to protect their brand?
For the record we own over 1500 domain namesto protect our core business unit. That’s 15k annual insurance. From what I am reading about the budgets and spend and planned spend of the new GTLD registries, a few bucks to protect their brand and market space will not kill them and I highly recommend that they do.
This story also speaks to bad faith. If the typosquatters show ads for .sexy domains I think that there is a system for dealing with this issue and last I heard the uniRegistry legal rep has a pretty good track record of success in the UDRP arena. Good super sleuthing on your part BTW lots of news stories will be generated during the massive rollout of hundreds of new GTLD extensions. Thanks for being on top of it.