Protect it or lose it!

We have recently seen some high profile domain names that haven’t been renewed by registrants.

Much of the time domain names are not renewed because they are no longer required, but on occasion, the registrant contact email is not updated after an employee leaves a business or a business stops using an email address.

Recently, Bunnings forgot to renew hardware.com.au, which was quickly snapped up by Woolworths, presumably for use in their hardware business. In this case, the registrant email address was not valid, which is likely to be the reason that the domain name was not renewed.

The consequences of this may be catastrophic for a business, but it need not happen.

Here are some simple tips to avoid your domain name accidentally expiring:

1. use generic email addresses as the registrant contact address, which forward emails to multiple people in an organisation;
2. diarise the expiry date of your domains;
3. maintain a consolidated intellectual property register which contains details of all of your valuable intellectual property such as domain names and trademarks;
4. use an automatic renewal function – most registrars have this service available, just ask;

In almost all cases, simply following these tips will help you avoid expiry. Remember once a domain name expires it becomes available (after a grace period) for registration by anyone else including your competitors. Protect it or lose it!

Domain name lawyers like Cooper Mills are constantly helping clients recover domain names, but prevention is better than cure….