Domain Blocking

Domain registrations are an important component of a brand protection strategy. In order to prevent abusive registrations, phishing, malware and other threats, some companies follow a strategy of registering their brands under all available TLDs. Others go so far as registering specific domains including homoglyph and typo variants. However, this approach is costly, and most brand owners opt for a more practical approach.

The aim of a well thought-out intellectual property protection strategy is to minimise the brand reputational risks and to protect intellectual property online. In terms of domain management, this should encompass defensive measures such as domain blocking of potentially malicious domains which is offered by a large number of registries.

With Domain Blocking, a string, label or keyword that contains a brand name or trademarked term in any form can be blocked by the domain registry and thus cannot be registered for any purpose.

Typical domain blocking services block multiple domain extensions and subdomains with a single block. A number of providers also offer extended services which provide blocks over multiple string variants including common typos and mixed script or homoglyph registrations.