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Mar 16, 2016

DOT Insurance — The New Internet Place for the Global Insurance Community

What Insurance Institutions Need To Know About Insurance

Introduction to .INSURANCE

In the past couple of years, ICANN, the international organization responsible for the management and oversight of the Internet, has approved the release of hundreds of new Top Level Domains (TLDs) – including .INSURANCE. This vast expansion of the Internet beyond the traditional TLDs, such as .Com, .Net, and .Org, has profoundly affected trademark owners. For one, they must now police their trademarks across all of the new TLDs, which—absent sound legal strategy—can compound their costs of effective intellectual property rights enforcement. These new TLDs can also be leveraged by companies to protect their brands and good names. .INSURANCE presents one such opportunity.

Benefits of .INSURANCE

.INSURANCE will be a secure and easily identifiable Internet space for insurance companies and organizations, and their customers. Unlike most new TLDs, .INSURANCE will be restricted to legitimate members of the global insurance community. All applicants attempting to register domain names in .INSURANCE must verify their eligibility as insurance institutions. Because of this, .INSURANCE will be less prone to cybersquatting and misuse by unauthorized parties.  Even verified applicants can only purchase domain names that correspond to their trademarks or trade names. Because .INSURANCE is going to be an exclusive space for the insurance community, brand owners in the insurance industry can leverage this TLD for new marketing and branding opportunities.

To Register in .INSURANCE, First Use the Trademark Clearinghouse

.INSURANCE will be publicly available as early as June 2016. But even before the launch, .INSURANCE will provide a priority (Sunrise) registration period for trademark owners that will commence in May 2016. The best way for a trademark holder to take advantage of the Sunrise period, and a host of other rights protection mechanisms, is to record its federally registered trademarks in the Trademark Clearinghouse, a special tool developed specifically to protect trademark rights. Recording marks in the Trademark Clearinghouse may be handled by accredited agents, such as our firm.

For a nominal fee (approximately $150 per mark), recording a registered trademark or trade name in the Trademark Clearinghouse provides several benefits: It enables the brand owner to register any domain names matching its recorded marks—in any new TLDs, including .INSURANCE—before the general public. The Trademark Clearinghouse also 1) warns applicants if their applied-for domain names conflict with a recorded mark, and 2) provides notices to the brand owner if such matching domain names are ultimately registered. All in all, the Trademark Clearinghouse is an invaluable online rights protection tool we highly recommend.

The priority registration period for .INSURANCE begins on May 9, 2016. To take advantage of priority registration, to learn about the Trademark Clearinghouse, and a host of other rights protection mechanisms to protect your brand in .INSURANCE, contact Jim Bikoff, Partner and Head of the Internet Law Practice Group at Smith, Gambrell & Russell.


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