Porn sites will not be the only entities to register themselves under the new .xxx extension; the fortune 500
and some celebrities are looking at purchasing some of these adult themed extensions.
The newly approved .xxx extension which will be managed by the ICM registry, who expects a significant
portion of the new registrations to be defensive ones.
Defensive registrations in the basic definition, are domain name registrations where the entity registering a domain name, is registering the domain with the hope they can block anyone else from registering it first.
This type of registration rarely has unique content and is often parked or is used as a redirect to a site that the owner has content in.
The argument could be made that it sounds like a big waste of money and from a practicality standpoint you may be right.
However, given the tenacity of cybersquatters and infringers, in many cases a defensive registration is less expensive and less time consuming than defending your mark in court.
To this end, the management of the ICM Registry is encouraging well known brands and famous people to
apply during the launch period to keep their brands and identities out of the online red-light district.
Far from a philanthropic or humanitarian measure, the act of blocking names will be a significant revenue
generating tactic for ICM, at $60 per .xxx registration. ICM is figuring a $30 million per year take from these
new registrations, and admittedly that figure is speculating that the number of applications for defensive
registration purposes may quite possibly overtake actual registrations.
In addition, they are also counting on the fact that companies will figure that $60 per brand is cheap insurance against filing lawsuits for brand defamation disputes and issues over their brands in the adult name-space.
While seemingly a good strategy, simply defensively registering names is no guarantee of keeping you out of court; especially where adult oriented websites are concerned.
Reference that recently, the parent company of adult content company Exxxotica, filed suit against the adult- industry show “Adultcon” over a 19 domain name infringement issue.
The basis of the complaint is that Exxxotica claims to have registered its name with the U.S. Copyright Office
in 2008, before Adultcon, which registered the names in question on Jan 15th of this year.
Furthermore the suit contends that the 19 domain names are essentially engaging in customer confusion and brand dilution.
The sites in questions are: Exxxotica-lv.com, ExxxoticaExpo-LA.com, ExxxoticaExpo-LV.com,
ExxxoticaExpoLA.com, ExxxoticaExpoLV.com, ExxxoticaLA.com, ExxxoticaLasVegas.com,
ExxxoticaLosAngeles.com, Exxxoticalv.com; ExxxoticaVegas.com; ExoticaExpo-LA.com, ExoticaExpo-LV.com,
ExoticaExpoLA.com, ExoticaExpoLV.com, ExoticaLA.com, ExoticaLosAngeles.com, ExoticaLV.com,
ExoticavaLasVegas.com and ExoticaVegas.com.
These 19 domain names all redirect to Adultcon.com.
The plaintiff is seeking a settlement of approximately $100,000 for each domain name they contend is
squatted. Seemingly, they have calculated these damages as revenue lost due to traffic diversion since the January
registrations.
The adult industry does not have the market cornered on traffic diversion lawsuits however.
Not to be outdone, the University of Texas filed, then lost, its UDRP against Kevin Ham’s Vertical Axis company.
The controversy arose over “TexasSports.org” and the supposed customer confusion issue was centered
around the fact that the University’s owned site is TexasSports.com.
The basic argument centered around the “Texas” word and the University’s owned TM around “Texas”.
Given the fact that TexasSports.com gets over 300,000 visits per month, its not a surprise that they were concerned about TexasSports.org, but they have to let it go at this point.
Their argument was found to not hold merit in the UDRP decision.
TexasSports.mobi anyone? ( HINT: It was still available at the time of this writing)
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