The WorldTrademarkReview.com, published a story on Radix this morning and applicant for 29 new gTLD’s and spoke to Sandeep Ramchandani, business head of Radix , on how the company would market its offerings.
Radix’s marketing strategy is two-fold.”
“It plans to leverage its relationships with registrar channels as well as offering extensions directly to specific industries through direct marketing to brand owners.”
“On the company’s string selection process, Ramchandani explains: “We had a clear strategy when we formulated our list of gTLDs. We are aiming for those that will have maximum impact on a global scale, the ones that will reach potentially millions of customers worldwide.”
Radix’s applications fall into firmly in the ‘generic and industry terms’ camp, so risk mitigation will be a particular focus for trademark owners considering the impact of particular gTLDs on their trademark policing strategies. Probed on this, Radix notes that it plans to keep several of the gTLDs closed to the general public.
“With respect to sensitive TLDs such as ‘.bank’, ‘.loans’, ‘.doctor’ and so on, we don’t want anyone from outside the fraternity to leverage those extensions given the concerns about fraud, theft and misrepresentation,” he says. “For example, the banking industry spends millions of dollars to mitigate risks from phishing. But if banks transition to using ‘.bank’, consumers will see a very easy way to differentiate between legitimate websites and those that are potentially fraudulent. That’s the key value addition that we are offering.” Radix plans to verify banking licenses and registration certification of applicants as part of this process.
As to other rights protection mechanisms states, as with all gTLD applicants, brand owners will have access to the Uniform Rapid Suspension System (URS), a system that the company is already using on ‘.pw’
However, brand owners would welcome protection above and beyond the require minimum. Probed on this, he stresses that “we have always taken a very tough stand against abuse and follow a zero tolerance policy against all forms of abuse across our TLDs”, and explained that additional rights protection mechanisms will also include optional trademark declaration.
That process will entail making available the EPP trademark extension fields that are provided during the sunrise period. By letting brand owners declare trademark data during general availability, Radix hopes to lessen any confusion amongst mark holders and the public.
Other protection mechanisms available are profiling and blacklisting; a service that is currently being used within the Directi Group for collecting information on known offenders.
The group maintains abuse ratios for its approximately one million registrants base and uses the information to identify offending operators by pattern mapping.
Radix states that it has also implemented a comprehensive review process whereby a sample of randomly selected domain names are frequently analysed for potential trademark violations. It argues that this proactive approach ensures that it can detect infringement activity promptly and take action swiftly.
You can check out the entire story and interview here
