Files trademark application for .Eco — .Eco loser

What is planet.ECO up to with its latest trademark filing?

A firm that appears to be out of the running for the .Eco top level domain name has filed an intent-to-use trademark application for “.Eco”.

planet.ECO LLC was one of four applicants for the .Eco top level domain name. Rival applicant Big Room won a Community Priority Evaluation for .Eco, meaning it will get rights to run the domain name exclusively.

Two other applicants, Donuts and Minds + Machines, filed with ICANN for the Independent Review Process to challenge the community priority decision. That challenge is still pending.

planet.ECO does not appear to have further challenged the community evaluation decision.

But on December 4, it filed an intent-to-use trademark application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for .eco for “Domain registry operator services”. planet.eco by now has a heavily contested registration for “.eco” from many years ago, but it does not mention any sort of top level domain name registry services.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office does not register trademarks for top level domain names, so planet.ECO’s latest application will be denied.

Still, what is planet.ECO up to? Is this positioning to still go following Big Room? Or are the two parties now in cahoots?

Emails and messages to planet.eco and Big Room this morning were not immediately returned.