TEMPE, Ariz. — GoDaddy company ICM Registry has announced that its “defensive domain blocking product” Sunrise B — which preemptively blocked attempts to register a customer’s brand as a .xxx domain — will be phased out after a decade and replaced with a product called AdultBlock.
The new product will also block registration attempts under .porn, .adult and .sex.
This is one of the first major announcements by ICM Registry since GoDaddy Registry acquired the company on August 11 this year.
The newly-acquired company expressed a commitment to "partnering with brand owners and the larger IP community to continue enhancing the AdultBlock and AdultBlock+ products."
“2021 marks the 10-year anniversary of the launch of the .xxx top-level domain (TLD) by ICM Registry — and also the year that Sunrise B, the blocking product, migrates over to the upgraded AdultBlock product,” GoDaddy Registry’s Head of Professional Services Tony Kirsch wrote in an article published today on the Managing IP blog.
Kirsch explained that “in 2011, the .xxx TLD launched exclusively to host adult-themed content. At that time, ICM Registry introduced a defensive domain blocking product that brand owners could use to protect their trademarks from registrations in the .xxx namespace."
"Instead of the brand owner making defensive registrations in .xxx, Sunrise B blocked matching domain names from being registered," he added.
The initial 10-year-term Sunrise B block holders should convert to AdultBlock before December 1, Kirsch warned.
“Sunrise B block holders have until that date to take action to ensure that their marks do not become available for registration in the .xxx namespace TLD by unauthorized third parties,” he wrote.
For more information on the new AdultBlock and AdultBlock+ products, visit ManagingIP.com.