Trademark owners must act to avoid adult brands creating .xxx domains and can take advantage of the sunrise phase from September 7 through October 28, 2011.
I welcome you to read the Gardere Intellectual Property Alert entitled “Prevent the XXX Industry from Using Your Trademark” written by my partner Kay Schwartz and associate Jason Fulmer including these quick facts:
.XXX is reserved exclusively for the online adult entertainment industry.
The .XXX launch begins with the “Sunrise” phase, which is a limited period for trademark owners to protect brands before wider availability of domain names. The Sunrise phase is open September 7 – October 28, 2011.
Sunrise has two registration programs: Sunrise A and Sunrise B. Those wishing to register domains for adult brands use Sunrise A, while those wishing to proactively protect non-adult brands from non-legitimate use employ Sunrise B.
Beginning in December, any domain name not protected will be available for use by the adult entertainment industry.
ICM Registry administers this new top-level domain, and registrations are performed through many of the usual registrars (such as GoDaddy.com and Network Solutions).
All trademark owners need to give some thought to protecting their trademarks so they can avoid adult sites from hijacking valuable domain names.