Online Brand Protection In One Convenient Step

By Mason Cole

Managing a brand and trademark portfolio is a demanding undertaking that can require expert precision to prevent unsavory characters and companies from stealing intellectual property. Tools are needed to help companies better manage their IP assets in a more expedient and comprehensive fashion.

Nowhere is a more proactive IP defense and monitoring tool more necessary for success than on the Internet. That is why Donuts, the world’s largest operator of new domain name extensions, created a way for trademark owners to block their marks and related terms from registration by outside entities via the Domains Protected Marks List (DPML) program.

Now, until December 31, 2016, Donuts is offering a unique opportunity with DPML Plus, an enhancement of the legacy service that allows brand owners to widen their protections by:

• For the first time, blocking common misspellings of their marks.
• Blocking their marks and mark-related terms from registration for an initial 10-year period.
• Blocking one exact match term and three additional strings (legacy DPML covers one string) that contain a mark or common misspellings of the mark (further “contains” or misspelled terms beyond these three strings are available to block for an additional fee).
• Also for the first time, blocking a mark in premium second-level domains across all Donuts’ gTLDs.

DPML Plus blocks are not subject to overrides by other parties with the same trademark. DPML Plus subscribers may submit unlimited overrides of their own blocked terms (for no wholesale override fee) if they elect to register and use a previously blocked term.

DPML is an innovative service that allows trademark owners to protect their marks and related terms across all of Donuts’ new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) at a fraction of what it would cost to defensively register the same term in all of Donuts’ nearly 200 domain names.  DPML works by “blocking” a string of characters from registration at the second level (the characters before the dot). The popular service is employed by thousands of subscribers — several Fortune 500 companies have employed DPML to proactively prevent trademark infringements, including Target, Verizon, Costco, Apple, HP, Microsoft and Amazon.  DPML has helped these companies effectively manage their Internet portfolios and reduce legal and litigation costs.

Trademark, brand and IP infringements are serious issues facing companies of every size, in every industry and in every locale. Here Donuts has provided an innovative tool that creatively addresses an ongoing need for brand owners.

The service is available from Donuts-authorized registrars to trademark owners with their marks registered in the Trademark Clearinghouse. For more information, check out Donuts’ DPML Plus Overview and FAQs.

Mason Cole

Mason Cole is the Vice President of Communications and Industry Relations at Donuts

Image Credits: Donuts