Brands are waiting to see what happens with ICANN's gTLD program launch, with a second hearing (following last week's grilling) taking place today in Washington.

In the meantime, another domain game — the introduction of .xxx website addresses — is convincing trademark-holders and brand marketers to protect their name and reputation from purveyors of adult content who they fear could sabotage their good names. Nowhere is this more true than for academic brand managers.

The ICM Registry gave trademark holders a one-time chance to pay $200 per address as a blocking charge in a ‘sunrise sale,’ and among the first academic brands to step up was the University of Kansas, buying kansas.xxx, rockchalkjayhawk.xxx, jayhawks.xxx, and more recently, kustore.xxx, kugirls.xxx and jayhawk.xxx for about $3,000 according to the AP.

"It's truly a preventative blocking measure, blocking others from doing it," commented Paul Vander Tuig, the university's trademark licensing director, to USA Today.

As we noted earlier this month, the scandal-rocked Penn State snapped up some .xxx domains to avoid further embarrassment. Carnegie Mellon, Indiana, Purdue, Pittsburgh and The University of Missouri have followed suit, with the latter securing missouri.xxx, missouritigers.xxx and mizzou.xxx.Continue reading...

Looking to get fancy with your site’s URL? It’ll cost you $185,000 to do it. 

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the nonprofit group that oversees the Internet’s address system, currently has 22 generic endings, such as .com, .edu, and .org. But it will open the doors to applications on Jan. 12 to let sites buy up whatever tags they’d like at a price of $185,000 per URL. (Earlier this week, ICANN opened up .xxx web addresses to all of you in the adult-entertainment industry who have been waiting so patiently.)

Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports, though, that the program “is failing to win over U.S. brand owners.”Continue reading...

Whether you are looking for or trying to avoid pornographic material on the Internet, the .xxx domain name that’ll kick off publicly next year will certainly help you travel whichever path you’ve chosen.

But before ICM Registry, the company in charge of the domain launch, opens up its doors for any Dick and Jane to register whatever website URL names he or she can dream up, it is asking for companies to pre-register names or apply to block registry of their brands, according to the Washington Post.

The domain name registrar even took out full-page ads in the Los Angeles Times and Financial Times this week to promote the launch of .xxx.Continue reading...