World Trademark Review has published the results of its annual research on tools of marketing promotion and protection of trademarks and brands. More than 550 lawyers who work in big companies and private practitioners who specialize in this field took part in the study. The results of the survey indicate that big business stopped worrying about new gTLDs and refer to them in a calm way now.
For example, in 2011, in the beginning of the first stage of the new gTLD’s program only 30% of corporate lawyers said that the companies they worked for wouldn’t change their brand and trademark protection and promotion strategy because of the new realities of the domain market. Today their share has doubled and amounted to 60%. Only 15.7% of respondents said that during last year their companies changed their strategies because of the new domains.
Even more telling is a list of threats based on the survey. Only a year ago the second place was held by the threat of illegal or malicious usage of trademarks or brands in domain names. This time this threat is only seventh on the list, it’s way behind the production of counterfeit products, online trade of it and spreading negative information about trademarks and brands on social networks (the first three positions on the list this year).
According to the authors of the research, such results could be explained by the combination of two factors. On the one hand, large companies quickly took necessary measures by protecting their trademarks and brands in the most popular and “themed” new domains. On the other hand, the new domains themselves turned out to be not so influential and important for the market for the big businesses to see reason for changing their strategies.
