Reglikedomain industry desk

Young finds out that brand protection is easier in .US — Ernst &

Firm doesn’t have to pay to protect domains with the S word.

I got a chuckle out of a few domain names that had a registrant change the prior week.

The three domains were all previously registered to Ernst & Young:

ernstandyoungeatsshit.us
ernstyoungeatsshit.us
eyeatsshit.us

Obviously brand protection firm Mark Monitor helped the firm register these domains back in 2009 for defensive purposes rather than for a fresh consulting practice.

Which makes it somewhat ironic that .us registry Neustar has confiscated the domain names.

I use the term “confiscated” lightly, since I’m not quite sure how it went down and I’m sure Ernst & Young is happy to no longer by renewal fees on these domains. It appears the domains were expired for a while last year, but I’m not too familiar with .us deletion policies.

The prior week the whois records for the three domains changed form Mark Monitor’s DNStinations to “.US Registration Policy”, which is the whois for domains Neustar takes over on policy grounds.

Turns out you can’t register domains with the seven dirty words.

Which makes brand protection a whole lot easier in .us than other TLDs.

Also on the wire

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