'Net Features : brands

Protect Your Brand and Save a Headache

Michael Garrity — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 08:35:00 GMT

On the Web, the most valuable part of your business is your brand, and branding always starts with the name of your company and website. Thus, it’s critical that you protect that identity to safeguard all of the assets you have wrapped up in it.

Recognizing the importance of brand name protection, “value based” domain name registrar NameIT has partnered with Digital Media Monitors LLC to provide its clients with brand security and domain monitoring services.

Digital Media Monitors was selected because of its in-house expertise and access to “the most powerful domain monitoring tools available,” allowing NameIT customers to stay updated on the information needed to legally protect their brands. In addition, thanks to proprietary technology and alert systems, NameIT will be able to notify customers of any changes that may have an impact on their brands or businesses, which gives them an opportunity to take immediate, effective action.

This new service, known as NameIT Domain Monitoring and Brand Protection, offers four unique ways to help look after the identities of its customers. The first is Registrant Alerts, which alert businesses or individuals with registered domains anytime their brand name appears in a whois record for newly registered, renewed, or deleted domain names.

NameIT is also offering Brand Alert, so that businesses will know anytime a word or string of words close to their brand is used in a domain registration.

The third service is Domain Monitor, which provides information on the expiration dates and statuses of the domain names, and notifies customers of any status changes.

Finally, NameIT is offering its clients access to a plethora of industry experts and attorneys that can provide assistance in disputes, appraisals, and domain name sales.

Domain Names and the Fragility of Brands Online

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:54:00 GMT

Domain name management and brand protection company CSC (Corporation Service Company) released the findings of a recent study on trends of disputed domain names.

More than $220 million was spend on reclaiming domain names from third parties through the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) according to study results. According to CSC, "If brand owners had registered these domain names proactively, it would have only cost them $1.1 million (£600K), yielding a cost savings of $219 million (£132 million)."

"It isn't possible to completely eliminate the risk of cybersquatting; however, our analysis shows clear brand infringement patterns which can help avoid the unnecessary cost of going to UDRP," said Robert Holmes, Director of Accounts with CSC. "Our research helps brand owners identify these patterns so they can prioritize domain name registrations for the future and reduce the risk of infringement."

The analysis included all cases filed between January 2000 and May 2009 with the two major UDRP providers, including the United Nations' World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The research covered UDRP cases covering more than 45,000 domains, of which brand owners managed to recover 85% of non-cancelled disputes.

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Searching For Brand Information

Administrator — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 14:20:00 GMT

For business owners who want to name a new product, find out what products their competitors are selling or license their brand to a larger company, there is a pretty good, free database in FindOwnerSearch.com, a resource that enables users to access brand and category information.

When you type a brand into FindOwnerSearch.com, that brand and its owner information will be retrieved from over 1 million database entries. Users can also search for thousands of categories with results featuring brands associated with that specific category. For example, the category "magazine" results in thousands of entries. These can be sorted by owner and brand name (i.e. we can see the brand name owner, the address, website and phone - if available - for all of these publications). If you don't mind the liberal use of Adsense and simplistic presentation it's a resource to check out in your spare time.