In the modern world, brand domains have become part of the trademark for many companies, especially those that operate only online. And losing a domain name is a threat to reputation. Our colleagues from Online Patent told us what you ne to consider before registering a domain and how to protect it after.
How a domain works
Each site has an address that can be read in the browser line. For example, the address of the site of the service for protecting intellectual property Online Patent is onlinepatent.ru. This is the domain name .
It consists of several parts:
Domain structur
omain structure
The address can continue to the left – all the following parts after the dot will be 3rd, 4th, 5th level domains, or subdomains, for example: blog.magazine. site.ru. And the 1st level domain is call a domain zone . A domain zone is literally the zone in which the address is register. It can be:
international: .com, .net, .org – such zones are suitable for large international projects;
national: .ru, .su, .рф for Russia, .uk for Great Britain, .cn for China;
thematic: .aero – for airlines, .blog – for bloggers, .fun – for fan projects.
To register a domain, you first ne to come up with a primary name, that is, a 2nd-level domain (usually it repeats the company name), and then choose a domain zone .
Previously, most companies preferr international or national domains, especially .com or .ru, as they were consider to have a positive effect on website ranking, as they were older than other zones. This opinion was form because .com was the first zone in the world, it has exist since 1985. Initially, the domain was intend for commercial corporations, but then the policy chang: now a site with this “addition” can be of absolutely any focus (news, portals of industrial enterprises, social networks and much more).
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Zones do not affect the ranking of the zone to the extent that they were given before. But there is still a connection. Thus, it is better to choose national domains if you plan to promote within one country, international ones – for large projects in different countries, thematic ones – to emphasize the focus of the business or blog.
How to buy a domain name
Buying (registering) a domain is not actually a permanent purchase, but rather a temporary lease of the name. For example, .ru can be register for 1 year, and .com for a period of one to 10 years. That is, you pay for a specific period during which you have the right to use the domain name for your projects. At the end of this period, the name can be renew or sold. The Reg.ru Knowlge Base has a detail article about the life cycle of domains .
So, how do you buy a domain name? There are several ways:
Come up with a unique address and choose a domain zone. In this case, before registering a domain, you will ne to check the domain for availability .
Buy a domain in the Domain Store . A businessman always has the opportunity to buy an already promot domain (which may have a citation index, indexing in search engines). For example, the domain magazine.ru has been index since 1998. But its phone number list price is more than 1 million rubles.
Buy a drop domain. A drop domain is a name whose registration period has expir. If the owner does not renew the “lease”, the domain will go to a new owner.
Contact a broker. He will help you buy the domain you like: arrange a deal with the owner or select another suitable option.
Please remember that in all cases your identification data will be requir to register the resource.
Trademark – a guarantee of protection against theft
Sometimes domains are hijack in various ways, legal and illegal.
You may have notic that the car manufacturer Nissan has a different address on its official website instead of the standard nissan.com — nissan-global.com. This is because the manufacturer lost the opportunity to register the brand name of the same name in the .com zone — it was intercept by another company. In 1994, entrepreneur Uzi Nissan bought the address nissan.com for the website of a small computer sales company. The car manufacturer fail to take back the address, despite eight years of court proceings and accusations of domain hijacking and brand use — the court found them groundless.
Nissan website
So Uzi Nissan register the domain on completely legal grounds, but became a hijacker in the eyes of supporters of the automobile concern, which lost its brand name for the site.
But there are also real criminals who jordan phone number material deliberately intercept other people’s domains to demand a ransom for them or sell them at a higher price to other users. To do this, they hack mail, accounts, and even forge documents. And some register trademarks for certain domain names in order to later obtain rights to them through the court. We talk about such cases in the article about cybersquatting .
How to protect your domain from scammers? Register a trademark .
Companies that register a trademark for a domain receive the following benefits:
official rights to the register domain – in case of disputes and proceings, the court will side with the copyright holder;
blocking duplicate sites – if any company registers a domain similar to yours, it will be possible to get the name cancell;
compensation – for violation of trademark rights, the copyright holder company may demand compensation of up to 5 million rubles;
blocking competitors’ ads – if your brand is us for contextual advertising or in social networks, just write to the platform’s support service and request blocking, attaching scann documents.
Before registering a domain, it is also necessary to check whether there are any register trademarks in the area propos for registration. Otherwise, you may unwittingly violate another company’s rights to a trademark and receive a fine.
