Get it while it's Hot: Which Fortune 500 Companies Participated in the Sunrise Period for the .XXX Top-Level Domain

In March 2011, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Board approved .XXX, a new sponsored top- level domain (sTLD) targeting the adult entertainment industry. ICANN's approval of .XXX came after more than ten years of rancorous debate that pinned the unlikely bedfellows of governments, the adult entertainment industry and religious and conservative groups against ICANN and ICM Registry, the company that runs .XXX. Advocates of .XXX herald its approval because it will open up domains that are unavailable in the .COM space (such as Casting.XXX or Live.XXX – warning, both domains currently host adult sites), while at the same time creating a clearly delineated online space for pornography.

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For businesses and adult companies with an established digital presence in .COM or other existing extensions, however, .XXX is a less than welcome development. With each new top-level domain (TLD), sponsored or generic, that is added to the Internet, the opportunity for trademark infringing and brand diluting activity like cybersquatting increases dramatically. Cybersquatting is the bad faith act of registering domain names, particularly those identical or confusingly similar to existing trademarks, with the intention of reselling them at an inflated price or otherwise profiting from them. In order to protect their brands' trademarks, businesses need to proactively register their marks as domain names across a broad spectrum of TLDs, as well as country-code TLDs.

Setting a New Standard for Sunrise Periods

ICM Registry launched the .XXX TLD with unprecedented trademark protection services. Given its objective to serve the adult community, .XXX threatens a particularly unique and damaging iteration of cybersquatting that other, more innocuous TLDs do not. Just imagine the public relations fiasco that would be engendered by the bad faith registration of a trusted brand like, for example, Disney.xxx. So ICM went above and beyond to give trademark owners the chance to protect their marks. As Becky Burr, an attorney who has advised ICM Registry, told FairWinds, "The last thing ICM wanted was a fight with trademark owners."

In light of this concern, ICM Registry implemented a new domain registration policy that allowed trademark holders to completely block their trademarks in the .XXX space. Before opening up .XXX to registrations to the general public, ICM Registry launched a three-phase preregistration process. During the Sunrise Period A, qualified members from inside the adult entertainment industry were able to apply to reserve their trademarks.

During the concurrent Sunrise Period B, registered trademark holders from outside the adult entertainment industry had the opportunity to proactively register their marks as domains. Under ICM's system, all registrations made during Sunrise Period B would automatically resolve to a generic informational page, pictured below. Besides protecting brand owners' trademarks, this solution solved the delicate question of where businesses should point a defensively registered .XXX domain.

Moreover, trademark owners had to pay a one-time fee of approximately $200 per domain to permanently block their marks in .XXX. This fee is historically low in comparison to other Sunrise registration periods. Following Sunrise Period B, qualified members of the adult community were able to register domains during what ICM Registry dubbed the Landrush Phase.

On December 6, 2011, after the close of the Landrush Period, .XXX became available to the general public and all preregistered domains went live. FairWinds was curious to learn which of America's biggest companies had taken advantage ICM's new, domain-blocking registration feature.

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