The MMX gTLD registry has announced a new brand-blocking service for the adult gTLDs it manages, including .XXX, .ADULT, .PORN, and .SEX. The MMX gTLD registry began to manage them about a year ago when it acquired ICM, which ran them before, for about $41 million.
The Adult Block Services will allow trademark owners to cancel domain name registration in porn-themed gTLDs. The cost has not been revealed, but it is known that it will be less than the price of individual defensive registrations. The extended version, Adult Block Plus, will also allow blocking confusingly similar variations of their trademarks (a trick often used by the unscrupulous).
The service is expected to be popular. According to Domain Incite, about 2,000 domain names each were registered in .ADULT, .PORN, and .SEX during the sunrise period (when only trademark owners can register new names), or about 20 times more than the average gTLD gets. Today almost every fifth domain registration in an adult gTLD is probably carried out for defensive purposes, which means that trademark owners only register them to prevent others from using them. Of course, large companies are unlikely to create pornographic websites, but they also don’t want their brands connected to pornographic sites. This is what Adult Block Services was designed for.
