NEW YORK, NY – If you had not heard yet – domain registry, parking and portfolio management company “Uniregistry” has launched a re-branding effort changing its popular brand name from “Uniregistry” to simply “UNI”.
Two things immediately came to mind upon seeing this news.
- Does the company own the UNI.com domain name? The answer: Surprisingly it does not. The domain name UNI.com has been registered since 1993 and is currently owned by an Italian company which according to its translated Who We Are page is over 100 years old and named the Italian National Unification Body. That’s oddity number one.
- The second thing I thought to check was the new gTLD application list, to see if maybe UNI’s love of the new gTLDs (they own hundreds of new extensions) spawned the burning desire to itself operate on its own branded URL, “.uni” instead, switching from this old, played out senior citizen of domain names (joke – .com) to a new flashy gTLD. The result? No application found.
Seems odd to me to re-brand an already existing and successful brand to a three character acronym without having the .com domain name, especially for a pioneering domain company that itself, buys, sells and trades hundreds of thousands of domain names.
According to the United States Patent and Trademark Office Uniregistrar Corp. filed for a trademark for “UNI” on November 28, 2018.
However, I do see at least one live mark with similar goods and services from a Hong Kong company which ‘could’ or ‘might’ have the ability to interfere or hold-up the mark from being approved for principle registration, (Serial Number 87349265 contains some potential similarities with the sending and receiving of email).
Uniregistry Corporation was founded in 2012 by Internet pioneer Frank Schilling and became an ICANN accredited registrar in 2013. The original Uniregistry trademark was approved in the United States in 2014.
About The Author: John Colascione is Chief Executive Officer of Internet Marketing Services Inc. He specializes in Website Monetization, is a Google AdWords Certified Professional, authored a ‘how to’ book called ”Mastering Your Website‘, and is a key player in several Internet related businesses through his search engine strategy brand Searchen Networks®