Marketing Handy

Since a community username will essentially be the same as a domain name, these social network TLDs (top-level domain) will be applying ICANN’s trademark protection policies to usernames. The result will be predictability for the end-user and predictability for trademark owners. And the policies represent good business practices for these social networks too.

These policies include:

A trademark dispute policy for ownership of domain names: A trademark dispute policy helps the Social Network TLD stay out of any legal disputes that occur between the network member and the trademark owner. It minimizes legal costs for Social Network TLDs, just as it has for existing domain registry operators.
A sunrise period and/or monitoring service: A sunrise period for trademark owners allows trademark owners to secure their brands before the general public. This will generate goodwill among the trademark community for the Social Network TLD.
A Whois database of usernames: The Whois database allows trademark owners to look up who has registered a domain to help determine if it’s someone with legitimate rights to the name.