In 2011, ICM Registry launched a groundbreaking domain blocking service that allowed trademark owners to defensively block their marks from public registration in the .xxx namespace, commonly referred to as ‘Sunrise B’ registrations.

This highly-successful programme provided much-needed protection to almost 70,000 marks globally and was widely regarded as the most intellectual property favourable launch of a new top-level domain (TLD).

However, with the ten-year term for all .xxx Sunrise B block holders rapidly approaching on December 1, 2021, it is imperative that trademark owners understand the implications of letting their protections lapse and act immediately to migrate over to one of two significantly improved and upgraded domain blocking options provided by ICM Registry.

Upgraded domain blocking options

ICM Registry has designed two greatly enhanced rights protection options to replace the expiring Sunrise B blocks: AdultBlock and AdultBlock+. And in good news for trademark owners, these products have been extended to automatically include coverage across the three other adult-themed domain extensions currently available on the web: .sex, .porn and .adult.

AdultBlock allows brand owners to block the registration of exact-match trademark terms by unauthorized third parties across all four adult TLDs.

AdultBlock+ takes the core functionality of AdultBlock and maximises the protection by extending coverage to include all look-alike registrations and typographical errors that appear confusingly similar to the trademarked term across all four adult TLDs.

AdultBlock and AdultBlock+ also extends protections more broadly and allow for the inclusion of unregistered or common law marks, company names and even celebrity names, in newly created blocks.

Holders of existing .xxx Sunrise B blocks simply need to contact their current domain name registrar and request that their rights are legacied into the AdultBlock service. Similarly, owners of a trademark validated by the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH) can order an AdultBlock product using those pre-validated rights.

AdultBlock+ unlimited blocking for maximum protection

AdultBlock+ provides brands with an exceptionally powerful tool to combat domain abuse and provides unlimited blocking of all additional look-alike names generated using the Unicode Consortium Standard. Unlimited blocking applies to all labels generated by the TMCH and contained within the signed mark data (SMD) file.

This provides additional protection to rights owners, as look-alike variations are susceptible to abuse as they appear confusingly similar to trademarked terms. With an average of three labels per mark and the scope for thousands of variations per name as a result of internationalised domain name (IDN) script variants and homoglyph characters, phishers often use these look-alike domain names to confuse people.

With AdultBlock+, trademark owners do not need to choose which labels they want to protect. Instead, they can rest assured that all labels and variants are automatically protected across all adult-themed TLDs.