Trademarks are used to identify a company’s product or service. Domain names are the online addresses that businesses use to direct their customers to their websites. Ecommerce and internet marketing have become equally crucial for a company’s value and existence, thanks to the exponential rise of both. It may be disastrous for a corporation if both of those parts of its assets are not adequately secured.
When Should You Register a Trademark Domain Name?
In an ideal world, trademark and domain name registration would go hand in hand.
Even if you have the ideal trademark for your company, what if the domain name isn’t available? If potential clients are unable to discover you online using your trademark name, it may not be worth the effort to position your new brand in the market.
Every company should strive to have trademarks and domain names that are identical. If a proper plan is not in place from the outset, this is not always achievable.
Differences in general Trademarks and Domain Names: What’s the Difference?
Trademarks protect a company’s brand or design in order to set it apart from rivals selling identical goods or services.
The words that connect you to a website are known as domain names. To visit a website without domain names, you’d need to know its IP address.
A trademark application is filed with the patent and trademark office in the nation where the trademark will be protected. A trademark registration normally necessitates the use of an IP law firm.
A domain name is registered with a domain name registrar that isn’t always linked to a certain nation. In most cases, anybody may register a domain name directly through the registration, without the assistance of a law firm.
The trademark owner’s rights to the trademark are limited to the nation or countries in which the trademark has been successfully registered.
The domain name owner has exclusive rights to use the domain name in its current configuration. Top-level domains may be accessed from anywhere on the planet via the internet.
Even though they are for unrelated items or services, identical trademarks might be registered under several classifications in the same nation.
In the case of domain names, a single top-level domain cannot have identical domain names. The final part of a domain name is known as the top-level domain. “com”, “net”, and “org” are examples of top-level domains.
The identity of the trademark owner will always be visible to the public.
In certain circumstances, additional costs might be paid to hide information about the domain name’s owner.
Intellectual property is represented by a registered trademark.
Intellectual property rights are not granted by a domain name.
For New Domain Name Extensions, registering a trademark domain name is required.
There are hundreds of domain name extensions available right now, and new ones are being added all the time. When new domain extensions are introduced, trademark owners normally have first preference in securing their domain name.
One of the reasons why trademarking your domain name is so crucial is this.
A Sunrise period in domain name registration
When a new domain extension is released, trademark owners are generally given a window of opportunity to register their domain name before anybody else. The sunrise phase is what it’s called.
If you don’t have a trademark but want to protect your domain name, you can submit a trademark before the domain name expires.
Depending on the circumstances, several nations may be considered for trademark registration. If you have a certain domain extension in mind, please contact us for additional information.
Landrush period in domain name registration
After a domain’s sunrise phase has ended, the domain name registration will enter a landrush period. In this scenario, the rule will be first come, first served. As a result, if your domain name has not yet been registered, you should do so as soon as possible.
How to protect your trademark domain names online?
Register for different domain name extensions
Why would you just register your domain name as a “.com” and leave the domain.net unprotected? We propose registering your trademark domain name for several extensions as a precaution. Only a few domain extensions are clearly recognized by customers, despite the fact that there are hundreds of them.
Register variants of your trademark domain names
If your trademark is TODOO, and your domain name is todoo.com, make sure no one else registers toodoo.com. Both are quite similar, and your customers may be confused by them. It’s usually a good idea to register domain names with typos or various phonetic spellings.
What to do if your domain name is taken or your competitor has registered a similar domain name?
You may be a victim of trademark squatting if you have a registered trademark and a domain name that is confusingly similar to your brand is being utilized in a way that hurts your business. Trademark squatting has the same effect on a firm as trademark infringement.
When a domain name is registered in bad faith, it is known as trademark squatting. Different dispute resolution mechanisms exist depending on the domain name extension. The Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy applies to the majority of regularly used domain extensions (UDRP). If you have any queries about how to protect domain names that are similar to your brand, contact us.