How to master your new domain

The virtual real estate available to franchisors on the Internet is about to expand rapidly, but brand leaders must move quickly to protect their trademarks and brand names, two franchise attorneys recently advised. A new crop of generic top-level domains, or gTLDs, will become available to all brands beginning next month, giving franchises the chance to stake new territory online with unique addresses ending in “.pizza” or “.restaurant,” in addition to the customary .com or .net. The .restaurant and .pizza suffixes are two of more than 400 gTLDs approved for registration by ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Franchise companies ought to consider locking up their domain names with these new gTLDs, not just for their own benefit but also to prevent others from hijacking their brand names online, suggested Mark Feldman and Michael Geller, two Chicago-based attorneys with DLA Piper. “Instead of ending its Web address with a brand or company name followed by .com, an organization can select a gTLD that reflects the nature of its business,” Feldman and Geller wrote. “ICANN says this benefits businesses by allowing for more unique Web addresses. However, the array of new gTLDs also exposes companies to an increasing number of bad-faith cybersquatters.” The attorneys strongly suggested that all franchise brands consider registering their brand names and trademarks with new gTLDs, whether they are food-related or pertaining to a different franchising segment, such as “.hotel” or “.realty.” Just as they did decades ago in the first wave of e-commerce growing on the Internet, cybersquatters target any brand they can by snatching up available domain names and holding them until a brand pays a higher fee than it would have cost to register the domain in the first place. “Based on our experience with other new domains that have launched, a third party is likely to register a .restaurant or .pizza domain name for just about any fairly well-known brand if the restaurant does not pre-emptively register it during the sunrise period,” they wrote. “In this expanding universe, vigilance is essential to protect your brand.” Now through Nov. 1, the Trademark Clearinghouse is holding a “sunrise period,” during which trademark owners exclusively may register the .restaurant domain for their brands. A similar sunrise period lasts until Nov. 29 for the .pizza suffix. Registration costs less than $700 for 10 years, and most domain name vendors can handle the registrations, Feldman and Geller wrote. They added that the Trademark Clearinghouse offers two protections to brands for the $250 annual registration fee: the Trademark Claims Service and the Sunrise Service. The former notifies brand owners of possible infringements to their trademarks from a cybersquatter attempting to register a domain name with a brand mark, while the latter gives brand owners a “sunrise” period of at least 30 days to register a domain name with its brand mark before the public has an opportunity to do so.