HTC Terminates its .Brand domain .HTC

Last month, McDonalds dumped its .brand top level domain names .McDonalds and .MCD, HTC the phone company has joined a growing list of new gTLD applicants who have opted to terminate registry agreements. HTC is now the 27th .brand owner to kill its gtld. The $4.3 billion-a-year Taiwanese HTC wrote to ICANN on  May 8 …

IP Attorneys Expected Reported Growth in Brand Protection Spend

More than a third of companies have increased trademark policing budgets since last year, according to a recent report from IP management and analytics software company Lecorpio. Lecorpio’s second annual “Trademark Management Study,” released May 16, asked the company’s corporate counsel clients about changes in their trademark portfolios and in-house counsel teams. Responses to one …

Will Mere Uncertainty Drive Brand Owners To Participate in ICANN’s New gTLDs Effort?

By Amy E. Bivins of bna.com ICANN Trademark Jargon, Like everything else at ICANN, trademark-related discussions are laced with acronyms and buzzwords that can make communications nearly unintelligible to those unfamiliar with the relevant shorthand. These terms of interest to brand owners come up most often: ACPA. Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act. A U.S. statute that …

Many brands are rethinking their Internet identity strategies. – Are they contemplating is boycotting the defensive registration all together?

Companies looking to protect their brand identity on the Internet from phishers and cybersquatters will soon be faced with a dot-com identity crisis. “We’re hostage to the situation,” said Bob Liodice, president and CEO of the Association of National Advertisers, which has been fighting hard to convince Icann to put into place better trademark protections. …