Domain Monitoring and Auditing

Online monitoring refers to the practice of collecting and analyzing the data available on the internet. There are many types of monitoring on the internet including domain monitoring, website monitoring, uptime monitoring, transaction monitoring, DNS monitoring, marketplace monitoring, mobile apps monitoring and brand monitoring.

Domain monitoring is the practice of checking and reporting on the registration status of your domain name portfolio. Domain monitoring identifies when problem domains are nearing expiration or when they change status.

We as your monitoring services provider can detect new problematic domain registrations that may infringe on trademarks.

An efficient domain name audit and monitoring service provides a rapid overview of registered and available domain names (including gTLDs and ccTLDs) related to your brands and trademarks. This enables you to deploy a rapid and effective brand protection strategy to protect yourself against online criminal activity that tackles identified vulnerabilities in your security settings.

For the most effective domain management of your online brand, a security audit of your domain names is a must do.

A convenient domain monitoring service provides trademark holders with a simple and rapid overview of registered and available domain names related to their brand and trademark names. Domain monitoring typically uses Top Level Domain Zone files (a daily record of all domain names registered or deleted) and a mix of internet searching and parallel lookups (a search on specific terms in specific Top Level Domains).

A domain monitoring can include:

• Exact brand names and/or trademark matches
• Domain names, which contain a brand name or trademark in it
• Visually similar domain names
• Typo variants

In order to protect its trade marks, reputation and customers brand owners must ensure they are aware of who may be trying to damage its reputation or divert its revenues, and be prepared to defend their rights aggressively online. For example, If online customers are diverted to a website selling counterfeit branded goods then revenue will be diverted away from the brand owner and into the hands of a 3rd party but the reputation of the brand owner is likely to be negatively affected.

A domain registrant must be able to prove a legal intention to use the domain they have registered for a legitimate purpose, otherwise the registration may be considered malicious and the registrant may be considered a domain squatter. Since the registrant of such a domain prevents the legitimate trademark holder from registering and using that domain, the registrant may be found to be acting illegally in those countries where proprietary, company and trademark names can be protected. If proof of malicious intent (bad faith) registration can be provided in court, or via two domain name specific dispute resolution processes, which have been adopted by a large number of registries: Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) and Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS). If bad faith is proved the domain name can be transferred to the legitimate brand owner or suspended.