Digital Brand Management: Domains Intellectual Property

An Australian domain name registrar called Melbourne IT has acquired Verisign's business assets for their Digital Brand Management Services (DBMS) for just over US $50 million. Melbourne IT began their stake in the internet domain registrar business with a near lock on registration of dot com dot au domains in the 90's and have been publicly traded on the Australian stock exchange since 1999. This puts 4500 "Premium" accounts and nearly a half million domain names under an Aussie company... that has offices worldwide, including US.

Google Android Mobile Domains vs Squatters

Last November, a site called Android Community posted a dicsussion thread titled "Squatting on Android Domains - Are You Guilty?" and then listed that Google had moved a large collection of Android based domain names to point at Google DNS servers (though none resolve to a destination as of this evening). These domains are all based on the name for Google's mobile phone operating system and "Software Developers Kit" called - what else - Android.

The Android Community owner, an Android enthusiast and apparent iPhone fan and retailer of accessories, Vincent Nguyen, admitted to having reserved a bunch of Android names himself.

So in line with yesterdays post about Google-owned domain names related to Google products being protected by Markmonitor.com for Google. I took a look at the thirteen Android related domain names on the long list of those domains posted by Pingdom.com and discussed here yesterday, then did a bit of standard web searches to find the Android discussion forum post mentioned above in which Nguyen lists the 26 additional dot net and dot org domains reserved by Google and protected by MarkMonitor.com.

Currently this list of domains all fail to resolve to any server.

androidalliance.com androidalliance.net androidalliance.org androiddevice.com androiddevice.net androiddevice.org androiddevices.com androiddevices.net androiddevices.org androidfederation.com androidfederation.net androidfederation.org androidhandset.com androidhandset.net androidhandset.org androidhandsets.com androidhandsets.net androidhandsets.org androidmobile.com androidmobile.net

androidmobile.org androidphone.com androidphone.net androidphone.org androidphones.com androidphones.net androidphones.org androidplatform.com androidplatform.net androidplatform.org androidsdk.com androidsdk.net androidsdk.org androidsoftware.com androidsoftware.net androidsoftware.org androidtechnology.com androidtechnology.net androidtechnology.org

My question for Google and MarkMonitor is why these and not the literally thousands of others that will no doubt be reserved by typo-squatters, enthusiasts and haters of Google, the Android mobile phone operating system, and plain opportunists looking for a few advertising dollars or domain parking income.

What is that determines those domains worth protecting and those that go unprotected and eventually fall to creative and quick domainers? Is this based on Google or MarkMonitor algorithms that suggest the most commonly searched domains? What makes MarkMonitor protect over 125 dot come (probably 375 including the .org and .net tld) domain names related to the Google IPO and only 39 related to the Android SDK? There must be a formula based on the amount of the cost to fight squatters for ownership through their expensive IP and trademark attorneys or in some cases costly court battles.

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