These are the kind of things that drive me crazy. The ICM registry has done a great job with the introduction of their tld and seems to have thought out their release plans but they have left out a little detail.What does it cost to protect your trademark from future registration?
Most businesses feel that they are being forced to protect their trademark in this situation but my opinion is that is part of business. You’re going to have to defend your name one way or another so why not pay a little price up front instead of costly legal action. In this case, ICM is making it easy to register your trademark and subsequently have it protected against future registration. All for a low low fee of we’ll let you know. Granted, the fee is going to be much less than it would cost to protect it in a URDP or a courtroom but I don’t understand why the fee is not part of all the FAQs.
I’ve checked through the information on how to proceed and maybe I’ve just missed it, but they sure don’t put it out in the open. Perhaps it’s right there in front of me. If someone finds it feel free to put it in the comments. I’m sure there are others that would like to know.
And that brings us to the final question. What is a fair fee to lock your trademark? If I were to put a number on it I would say $75, the same as the annual fee for .xxx. In my opinion that would cover administration and paperwork cost for now and into the future. All they really need to do is put it into the system under locked and the registry’s work is done. I imagine they could charge a lot less but I’ve never known a registry that didn’t try and make as much money as they could get away with.
I doubt we will see a shane.xxx.
Unless there willbe nude pictures.
And though that sounds like a joke (a bad one) i don’t see why companies plunge down alot of cash re trademarks etc.
Sure you could be driven by fear that someone actually does that, but with those prices i doubt you make any ROI. This gTLD will be heavy regulated.
least i am not gonna type shane.xxx to see any nudie pics of you….I like your blog .. but not that much *grin*
Shane,
The reason why the registry doesn’t say the price is because they don’t set the end-user pricing, instead ICANN registrars do.
The one-time fee ranges from $199 to $600. On the lower end, expect a no-frills service where the registrar blindly submits your application without verifying if it will pass validation. If it fails, there are no second chances.
The more trademark-oriented registrars will be conducting a pre-validation check prior to submission to make sure the application will be successful.
best regards,
Tom Barrett
EnCirca.com
Tom,
Thanks for the great explanation. It answers a lot of questions.
ICM’s registry fee for sunrise is, iirc, around the $160 mark.