UDRP and brand protection is something that comes up a lot in the domain reseller world, with people striving to protect their brands and names from cyber squatters intent on cashing in on their success, often who use WHOis Privacy to protect themselves. This begs the question of how rigorous you should be as a celebrity when protecting your brand. Is it right to register a ‘sir’ or ‘dame’ domain at the start of your career when you may never be knighted by her majesty? Is this just vain?
Sir Anthony Hopkins, who has enjoyed a film career spanning forty years and came to fame in films such as Othello, Legends of the Fall and most famously playing Hannibal Lecter in the Hannibal trilogy, recently found he had to take someone to UDRP for the name siranthonyhopkins.com.
The actor was knighted in 1993 and the domain name was registered in 2003, a decade later. This causes interest in to why the actor took so long as to register the complaint to protect his brand, although he is the third celebrity to claim their knighted domain back through the UDRP process, after Sir Paul McCartney and Sir Alex Ferguson filed complaints to gain their rightful domains back. Sir Bruce Forsyth, who was knighted by the queen this year does not own the rightful claim to his knighted domain, as it has been registered to an anonymous owner for the past four years.
When it comes to your brand, how thorough should you be when registering domain names? The answer is that it is key to register as many of the extensions as possible to ensure that as your brand flourishes, you do not have to engage in UDRP and court claims with squatters. As a domain reseller, ensure that you have a wide variety of TLDs for your customers, from .COM and .CO.UK domains to country specific ones and some of the new gTLDs.