Corporate domain registrants have long been advised to obtain defensive registrations of their key marks in major ccTLDs worldwide. After all, registrants have become all too well aware, if a company fails to reserve the names it values, inevitably someone else will. As a result, many companies hold substantial inventories of domain names registered not for active use but rather to prevent others from acquiring them. In today's tough economic climate, it's tempting to let these names lapse. But defensive registrations in ccTLDs are now arguably both more important and more useful than ever. Let me explain.

Squatting Continues in ccTLDs

The past two years have brought a trend towards liberalization of ccTLD registration restrictions. Some ccTLDs have reduced registration costs and streamlined registration and maintenance procedures. Others have lessened geographic restrictions on registration -- no longer requiring that registrants be located in a given country or have offices there in order to register a domain in that country's ccTLD. TLDs implementing these changes include the Netherlands' .NL, Sweden's .SE, China's .CN, and the United Arab Emirates' .AE.

For corporate registrants, especially those with famous marks, these liberalizations present a mix of positive and negative effects. These changes are helpful in that companies can now protect their marks without needing to satisfy territorial restrictions -- resolving a problem firms sometimes face when seeking to protect names in certain ccTLDs, despite lacking office in the countries at issue. At the same time, any reduction in rules has the potential to encourage speculators -- and this change in rules has the special effect of allowing speculation by registrants beyond the ccTLD's home country.

Facing pressure to cut costs, corporate registrants may at times consider failing to renew selected existing defensive registrations. Oddly, letting a name drop may actually make a company worse off than had it never registered the name in the first place. Indeed, certain new speculators target deleted names specifically -- reregistering such names as they become available, and demanding a payment of $600 to $3000 to restore each name to its prior owner. Worse, these speculators often show sexually-explicit images on the domain names they grab; in May 2002, I found 4500+ such domains registered by Tina's Free Live Webcam, and other speculators have reregistered at least tens of thousands more. New evidence suggests that this behavior may be migrating beyond .COM, .NET, and .ORG to ccTLDs -- meaning that registrants must be especially wary when allowing their names to drop. All the more reason to keep those defensive registrations up to date!

The Bright Side: Making Use of Defensive Registrations

When companies obtain defensive registrations, they do not typically put the registered domains to actual use. As a result, web browser requests for these domains often yield "host not found" or similar error messages. But there are good reasons to activate these names. Consider: Even experienced users sometimes guess domain names -- forgetting a company's preferred web address, or trying to save a few seconds by skipping a search engine. Defensive registrations let a company serve such users, giving them related and relevant content rather than turning them away. Better yet, in most web hosting configurations, it's neither costly nor complicated to provide web content on another domain name. Lest such changes undermine users' understanding of a company's "right" domain name, web servers can also be configured to redirect visitors to a company's main site -- so a request for acme-corporation.com might send the user to the acme.com domain name that company prefers.

Better yet, large firms can use ccTLDs to indicate their interest in serving markets beyond the United States. Sending this message begins with providing a functional web site at the web addresses expected in the countries at issue -- often in ccTLDs. But savvy companies go further by targetting users with content that's particularly appropriate in their respective countries: If a user requests the .FR version of a company's site, it's sensible to display the French version of the company's page rather than the usual English site.

Like it or not, defensive registrations are here to stay for at least a few more years and quite possibly considerably longer. But by putting defensive registration to use -- in serving forgettful or infrequent customers, and in demonstrating a commitment to customers worldwide -- companies can make good use of their defensive registration investments.

Benjamin Edelman is a first-year student at the Harvard Law School and a researcher at its Berkman Center for Internet & Society. Beyond domain names and ICANN, Ben's research interests include Internet filtering (in libraries, schools, and even entire countries), geolocation analysis, and filesharing.

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Google.de. Yahoo.de. Etc. Geographic targetting -- a cheaper and simpler replacement for IP-based geolocation systems. Reinforces local identity and shows an interest in customers from other regions.

In addition, all is not lost for those sites not yet ready for targetted national sites, or not inclined to go to these extra efforts. Consider the simple act of forwarding requests for companyname.nl (and similarly in other ccTLDs) to companyname.com. In this way, users get branded, helpful company content -- not just an error message saying "host not found." It may not be fancy, but it's a good way to get some value out of ccTLD registration expenses, and it's so easy that [you need not fear expense].

All that said, I don't want to overstate the problem. .NL and other newly-opened ccTLDs may accept registrations worldwide -- but unlike .CC other ccTLDs-turned-gTLDs, .NL is unlikely to market itself as a global alternative to .COM et al. And while .US already garners significant recognition within the United States, domains like .NL are not likely to match its prevalence by opening registration to the world at large. Nonetheless, past experiences suggest that [a little defensive registration can go a long way], and if corporate registrants might think twice before concluding that a reduction in domain name

come to have surprising won't may Granted, some ccTLDs have long been open to registration by anyone interested, regardless of geographic location. For example, .CC, .TV, and .WS have marketed themselves as alternatives to the traditional TLDs. But these ccTLDs-turned-gTLDs lost their associationThis doesn't mean .NL will become like .CC, .TV, or .WS; the latter ccTLDs have explicitly marketed themselves to registrants worldwide, while .NL doesn't seem to contemplate any such changes. Nonetheless, experience in the long-open .CC and kin may portend what will happen in .NL et al.

Bearing in mind the possible similarity between the long-open ccTLDs and newly-opened ccTLDs, corporate registrants may find it helpful to review the findings of my previous research on open ccTLDs. In a study of July 2002, I found that for more than two thirds of Fortune 1000 .COM domains, the corresponding .CC, .TV, or .WS was registered. Perhaps even more seriously, when one of these domains was registered, it was registered by a party other than the Fortune firm itself in more than two thirds of instances. The net effect is that the economic downturn notwithstanding, infringement on the marks of major firms remains a problem.

In this context, forward-thinking corporate registrants will likely find themselves purchasing quite a few defensive registrants -- of multiple marks in multiple ccTLDs. Disappointment at this expense is understandable (though thankfully costs are on the downturn, especially in the competitive TLDs that are coming to accept registrations worldwide). But when faced with lemons, one might sensibly try to make lemonade. Here's how.