Overwhelming Demand: Update on the Sunrise B Period for .XXX

ICM Registry, the company administering the .XXX top-level domain, has announced that it received 78,938 applications during the Sunrise B Period, which ended on Monday, October 31st. During the Sunrise B Period, trademark holders from outside the adult entertainment industry had the opportunity to preemptively register their trademarks in order to block them from being registered as .XXX domains. (Sunrise A gave trademark owners within the adult industry the opportunity to register domains before ICM opens the .XXX floodgates to the general public.) Given the overwhelming response, ICM and its IP Rights validation company will likely be processing the trademarks and applications through the end of November. As such, the results of the Sunrise B period will not be available until early December.

Before .XXX, the most recent big Sunrise rush occurred during the launch of .ASIA in 2008, when trademark owners filed just over 30,000 registrations. With over double that number of applications filed, the .XXX Sunrise B registrations dwarf those of .ASIA and highlight how seriously brand owners view the .XXX space as a potential source of damaging trademark infringement and brand dilution.