TM.Biz Launches New Workflow Tool to Secure Trademarks on Social Networks

Businesses get powerful new weapon for brand protection

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May 24, 2010, 07:30 ET

BOSTON, May 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, TM.Biz (http://www.tm.biz) announces its beta launch for brand owners. TM.Biz is a workflow tool that provides brand owners, trademark lawyers, domain name resellers and marketing managers the ability to search, reserve, and watch usernames on the Internet's top 500 social networks.

The TM.Biz Search service is a real-time exact search of usernames on the 500 top social networks. Users can segregate results by brand or client, review their search history, generate in-use reports of taken accounts and share their searches with colleagues and clients.

The TM.Biz Reserve service allows trademark owners to outsource the manual and tedious process of reserving brand names on hundreds of the most popular social networks. TM.Biz completes all the stages of establishing user accounts: initiating the sign-up process, adding contact information and verifying that accounts are active on up to 500 social networks.

The TM.Biz Watch service is an automated monitoring service that monitors over 500 social networks and notifies trademark owners via email if someone reserves their brand as a username.

"A presence on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter is increasingly becoming mandatory for brands and companies of all sizes. TM.Biz is a powerful new tool for the brand owner seeking to secure and protect their trademarks on social networks," says Thomas Barrett, President of EnCirca. "Even if businesses are not yet ready to develop a presence on social networks, they should reserve their brands now to protect against impersonators and guard against possible consumer confusion."

The role of user names on social networks is following a similar pattern as domain names. But social networks have none of the protection mechanisms trademark owners enjoy with domain names. There is no dispute policy such as UDRP (ICANN's Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy) to recover infringing trademarks; there is no public whois to determine the identity of who controls a user name; and there are no anti-cybersquatting laws designed to prevent consumer confusion over the source behind a trademark. In fact, most of the social networks do not even have a policy for recognizing the rights of trademark owners.

In addition, users are able to generate income by placing advertisements on their public profiles. An aftermarket for the re-sale of social network accounts has emerged, with auction sites such as eBay offering users the ability to sell their accounts to one another for hundreds of dollars. The ability to resell accounts has led some users to warehouse thousands of names in hopes they might sell them later. In fact, one individual has amassed over one million Facebook accounts for resale.

"User names in social networks are the new battleground for trademark owners," says Ken Hansen of Neustar, the operator of the .Biz registry. "Neustar is proud that EnCirca has selected the TM.Biz domain to launch this groundbreaking brand protection service."

To become a beta tester for TM.Biz, please visit http://www.tm.biz.

About TM.Biz

What would you call a business service designed for trademark professionals? TM.Biz is an obvious choice. The .Biz domain extension clearly communicates the target market of businesses, large and small. The letters "TM" are universally known to stand for "trademark." Thus, http://www.tm.biz is the perfect internet address for a new workflow tool for brand owners and trademark professionals to manage the lifecycle of trademarks on the social networks. The TM.Biz domain was allocated by Neustar, the .Biz registry operator (http://www.neustar.biz).

The .Biz domain is proving its worth not only as a marketing mechanism but also a true pro-business resource. .Biz was launched to meet the needs of high-performance web-enabled businesses of all sizes, anywhere in the world. Flexible, scalable, and secure, .Biz offers the robust technologies that firms demand in today's competitive corporate environment, while providing a particularly valuable alternative for small and medium-size businesses.

TM.Biz is a service of EnCirca, Inc. (http://www.encirca.com), a domain name registrar. EnCirca was formed in 2001 to help brand owners protect their trademarks in new namespaces. Visit EnCirca at the 2010 INTA Annual Meeting at booth #639.