Brand owners unaware that the first New gTLDs have recently launched

Reed Smith, an international law firm, wrote an article on the upcoming explosion in the number of global top-level domains (“gTLDs”). They believe that the vast majority of the public, and even the majority of brand owners, is unaware that the first new gTLDs have recently launched.

They then present a report on the .BIKE New gTLD launch. There are approximately 150 brands of bicycles in the United States (according to the National Bicycle Dealer Association), but most of these brands are relatively small.

Reed Smith searched to see if the top 20 bike brands in the US registered their .bike domain name and if not who did.

The results show that of the 20 brands selected for the study all 20 were registered as domain names in .BIKE. However, only 4 of the 20 brands have clearly been registered by the actual brand owner: GIANT.BIKE, JAMIS.BIKE, KESTREL.BIKE, TREK.BIKE. Three domains are reserved by the registry Donuts: FUJI.BIKE, HARO.BIKE, SCOTT.BIKE (not part of DPML).

The other 13 are all being held by third parties who seemingly have no relation to the brand owner, quite possibly cybersquatters.

Most bicycle brands either were not aware of the .BIKE launch or did not take protective steps to prevent potential cybersquatting once the launch occurred.