Com Laude Watch – Understanding Your Monitoring Scope Needs

by Caitlin McLintock

In today’s digital landscape, protecting your brand online is crucial. This involves preventing trademark dilution, avoiding reputational risks and financial losses, and ensuring your customers (or suppliers) are not scammed. In addition to owning and securing your key domain names, defensively registering domain names prevents others from misusing them and helps maintain a healthy domain name portfolio that aligns with your business strategy. Defensive domain name registration is a proactive measure to safeguard your brand’s reputation and ensure a secure online presence. If you plan to expand into new markets or regions, having the relevant domain names already registered can save you time and money in the future.

However, registering every possible domain name variation is neither practical nor cost-effective. Instead, we recommend actively monitoring the domain name space to identify new registrations that include your brand and may be intended to target it. This approach allows us to detect and respond to potential threats – such as domain names resolving to counterfeit sites or bait-and-switch schemes – early on. It also enables continued monitoring of domain names that may not pose an immediate risk but could become problematic if their activity changes over time.

Once you recognise the benefits and necessity of monitoring your brand in the domain name space, the question often arises: to what extent? Our domain name monitoring tool, Com Laude Watch, offers great flexibility to adjust to your individual needs, with key parameters being scope and frequency.

Domestic Brands

If your brand operates primarily at a local level it may be sufficient to focus on scanning all generic top-level domain names (gTLDs) such as .com, .shop,  .net, and .org. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the .com domain continued to receive the highest number of formal domain name disputes (80% of WIPO cases in 2023). To gain a solid understanding of the infringing landscape, monitoring the gTLD space alone can be an effective starting point. This approach provides essential coverage and helps identify immediate threats. It ensures that you are aware of potential issues within the most commonly used domain spaces.

Multi-Territory and Global Brands

If you operate on a cross-country or global scale, it is common practice to monitor domain name registrations across all relevant country-code TLDs (ccTLDs), for example .uk (United Kingdom), .us (United States of America), and .cn (China). The larger your global operations and brand usage, the more comprehensive a picture you will need of the potentially infringing domain name landscape. Therefore, we recommend adjusting the monitoring scope to include (in addition to all gTLDs) a reasonable range of ccTLDs (for example, all major European, North American, or Asian ccTLDs) or, depending on your brand, all major ccTLDs.

When identifying which ccTLDs are important, please keep this in mind: based on our experience, it’s beneficial to monitor domain names beyond just the countries where you are currently active (e.g., trading). There are several ccTLDs that are popular among bad actors, not necessarily because of the territory they represent. Examples include .co (Colombia) and .ai (Anguilla). These domain extensions are popular not due to high local brand activity, but because of their similarity to the .com space (in case of .co) and the alternative meaning of Artificial Intelligence (in case of .ai). Another factor to consider when selecting which ccTLDs to monitor is the availability and specific requirements of (local) dispute resolution mechanisms. For instance, .cn domain names can only be contested within three years of their registration. This makes it crucial to identify and address potential issues in that space as soon as possible.

According to WIPO, the top 10 ccTLDs in 2024 for domain name case filings were:

• .co (Colombia),
• .ai (Anguilla),
• .cc (Cocos Islands),
• .es (Spain),
• .cn (China),
• .nl (Netherlands),
• .se (Sweden),
• .io (British Indian Ocean Territory),
• .br (Brazil), and
• .eu (European Union).

Understanding your operations and needs is very important to us. We are here to work with you to determine the right monitoring scope, ensuring your needs are met without going overboard. We can also add individual ccTLDs to your monitoring scope, allowing step-by-step expansion.

Flexibility – Tailoring Your Monitoring Scope to Match Your Growth

It’s always fantastic to see companies experiencing growth and success. However, with this growth, new challenges may arise in the domain name space. Bad actors may take notice and attempt to exploit your brand, not only by increasing third-party domain name registrations but also by targeting ccTLDs in regions where you plan to expand (or already have expanded to). This can also occur due to third-party domain name registrations in anticipation of your newly filed trademarks in new jurisdictions.

As important as it is to adapt your domain name portfolio strategy to reflect and prepare for your (territorial) expansion, it is equally crucial to consider expanding the scope of your domain name monitoring.

Our monitoring tool, Com Laude Watch, is highly flexible. As you continue to grow, please feel free to reach out to us. Together, we can analyse whether your monitoring needs have expanded and determine which ccTLDs should be added to your scope. This way, we can align our monitoring efforts with your growth and success.