Donuts extends “Domains Protected Marks List Plus” offering through March 31, 2017

In September, Donuts announced that for a limited time, they would make Domains Protected Marks List (DPML) Plus available as an enhancement to their legacy service.

DPML Plus was to be available until December 31, 2016. They further said that effective January 1, 2017, the price of the legacy DPML service would be increased to better align the service’s benefits with marketplace value.

Today, thanks to strong demand for the service, Donuts announced that:

• DPML Plus will remain available through March 31, 2017, and
• Legacy DPML subscription prices will remain at current levels through January 31, 2017.

If you’re a brand owner that utilizes the legacy service, you now have additional time to renew your subscriptions prior to the price increase. And if you have yet to take advantage of DPML Plus, there are now three additional months available to employ the service for widened protections.

DPML is an innovative service that allows trademark owners to protect their marks and related labels (an “exact match” or “contains” label) across all of Donuts’ new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) at a fraction of what it would cost to defensively register the same labels.

Review of how DPML Plus is different from legacy DPML:

DPML Plus permits a block of one exact match trademarked label plus three additional labels that can be any combination of “contains” and/or misspellings.

For example:

• Donuts (an exact match, as represented in your SMD file)
• Donutsinc
• Donutstlds
• Domuts

Additional features of DPML Plus:

• Labels are blocked for ten years (vs. the current five in the legacy service), giving you the convenience of long-term brand protection.
• Labels are blocked not only across all standard domains, but all premium domain names in our gTLDs.
• If you decide to register and use a label you previously blocked, you may submit unlimited overrides for the duration of the ten-year period, with no wholesale override fees (domain name registration fees would still apply).
• DPML Plus blocks are not subject to overrides by other parties with the same trademark.

Donuts’ suggested retail price for DPML Plus is $9,999 (about the total cost to manage one to two UDRP proceedings) for the ten-year period. The cost-benefit analysis is compelling:

• At the average $32.99 retail cost for a registration in a Donuts TLD, it would cost almost $6,500 per year to defensively register one label across 197 TLDs, and nearly $26,000 for four labels. Multiply that number by ten—the life of the DPML Plus service—and the total exceeds a quarter of a million dollars.
• At a $9,999 retail price, DPML Plus blocks four labels for ten years, for an average yearly cost of $1.26 per label.

You may convert your current DPML subscription to DPML Plus. Your ten-year subscription will commence as of the purchase date of DPML Plus, and you may then add your three additional labels. You may add even more labels to the subscription for an additional fee for each label.

Please contact your accredited registrar for pricing and eligibility information, either for renewing your existing DPML subscriptions, or to take advantage of DPML Plus.

More information is available via the DPML Plus page and FAQs.