Will the Next Round of New gTLDs Offer Better Protections for Trademark Owners?
Leona Chen-Birkner | December 01, 2025
Leona is the Senior Business Development Manager at Brand Safety Alliance, the company behind GlobalBlock — an innovative solution that delivers unmatched online brand protection across 600+ domain extensions in a single transaction. With nearly two decades of extensive experience in the domain name industry, Leona works closely with IP professionals, brand experts and domain registrars worldwide. Leona has a strong background working in technology organizations in both North America and Asia. In addition to English, she speaks Cantonese, Mandarin, and Japanese.
When ICANN last opened the door to new generic Top-Level Domain (new gTLD) extensions, trademark owners faced an unprecedented enforcement burden.
That expansion of the internet in 2012 resulted in almost 2000 applications and ultimately introduced more than 800 new commercially available namespaces. Designed to create more opportunity and foster creativity and community, for consumers this program was pitched as an online real estate boom.
However, for trademark owners it was unchartered territory in IP protection and enforcement, on a global scale.
More than a decade later and with another new gTLD round on the horizon in 2026, ICANN has revisited whether its safeguards worked as intended.
Rights Protection Mechanisms in the 2012 Application Round
The expansion of new gTLDs in 2012 attempted to demonstrate that trademark rights could be preserved in an enlarged domain name system. Designed through years of community feedback and input, the “Rights Protection Mechanisms”(RPMs) were rolled out to reassure rights holders, presented as a balanced package:
- Proactive tools, such as Sunrise periods and Trademark Claims periods powered by the newly introduced Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH), were designed to give rights holders early access and warn potential registrants.
- Reactive tools, such as the Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) procedure was designed to create a faster solution to the existing UDRP and intended to provide recourse when infringing registrations inevitably occurred.
In practice, their impact was mixed at best. Sunrise registrations were prohibitively expensive for many as registries sought to take advantage of the comparatively larger budgets available from trademark owners, with auctions of contested terms often forcing brand owners into bidding wars over their own marks. Participation in these measures also required rights holders to join the TMCH, which imposed annual fees and was criticized for validating questionable marks, raising doubts about consistency and fairness.
On the enforcement side, the URS was meant to be faster and cheaper, but this did little to reduce the concerns from brand owners and increased the need for monitoring, especially at the conclusion of the time limited Trademark Claims period.
Together, the experience of the first round confirmed what many practitioners suspected: RPMs helped brands to protect themselves from the impact of the TLD expansion at the margins but often shifted costs and responsibilities back onto trademark owners to remain vigilant and take action.
Is Anything Changing in Round Two?
Applications for the next round of new gTLDs are projected to open in April 2026, with successful extensions potentially able to launch as early as 2027. For trademark practitioners, now is a crucial moment to assess what has changed from the first round, what has not, and what options are available to brand owners to monitor, register and enforce their rights.
In late 2020, the ICANN Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) submitted its report on a review of all the RPMs put in place for the first round. A key question asked in the review was whether “the RPMs collectively fulfill the objectives for their creation, namely, to provide trademark holders with either preventative or curative protections against cybersquatting and other abusive uses of their legally-recognized trademarks.”
In short, the report aimed to determine whether the RPMs were sufficient, or if changes or additions would be required to better protect rights holders in future.
Following consultation and adoption, the GNSO put 35 recommendations to the ICANN Board that outlined suggested changes to the existing RPMs before the second round. ICANN adopted all the recommendations in 2022.
The changes intend to create clearer and more straightforward processes and provide additional brand protections.
ICANN’s adopted changes, in brief:
- There are 15 recommendations related to the URS, designed to improve this quick, low-cost dispute resolution process to be more effective and fairer and reflect changes in data privacy regulations.
- Four recommendations related to the TMCH include limiting the eligibility of marks for mandatory Sunrise and Trademark Claims RPMs and placing additional responsibilities on the TMCH Validation Provider with regards to educating stakeholders and maintaining redundancy and uptime levels.
- Eight recommendations address the Sunrise period, focusing on preventing abuse, defining exemptions and refining the dispute resolution process. This includes preventing Registry Operators from intentionally circumventing mandatory RPMs or restricting brands from accessing them, such as through discriminatory pricing or withholding domains.
- The six recommendations for Trademark Claims maintain the current 90-day Claims Period for all new gTLDs and enhance the Claims Notice itself to be more user-friendly, among other adjustments.
The remaining recommendations address post-delegation dispute resolutions and an overarching focus on data collection.
These updates recognize some of the operational challenges posed by the RPMs, however several core aspects remain unchanged. The TMCH annual fee is retained and the working group conducting the review explicitly stated it didn’t develop any recommendations specifically to lower costs for end-users of RPMs.
Practical Implications for Trademark Professionals
For brand owners, the key takeaway is that the framework for rights protection will look very familiar in the next round. The modest changes ICANN has adopted may improve clarity and usability, but they do not remove the need for active monitoring and enforcement.
This has several practical consequences.
Clients will need guidance on whether to register their marks with the TMCH and whether the value of Sunrise registrations outweighs the cost. Trademark Claims notices may become slightly more useful, but they are unlikely to deter infringers. Advising on when to act – and when not to – will remain part of enforcement strategy. Enforcement will still likely require a combination of URS and UDRP proceedings, depending on the rights holder’s preferred outcome. Multinational brands with large portfolios may not be able to cover every extension, so some prioritization of marks and namespaces will be crucial.
The reality is trademark owners will continue to carry the enforcement burden. While the next round may feel distant, trademark professionals know that preparation cannot wait until launch.
Now is a crucial time to:
- Track how these changes are implemented and any additional guidance that emerges
- Begin educating clients on what will and won’t change in the RPM framework
- Review or develop processes for monitoring and enforcement
- Consider new or alternative methods of brand protection such as domain blocking, which provide a more proactive approach
The next round of new gTLDs will use an RPM framework that is largely unchanged. ICANN’s refinements offer incremental improvements but perhaps not the structural reforms many trademark owners hoped for.
For trademark professionals, success in the next round will depend less on new safeguards from ICANN and more on strategic preparation and eagle-eyed advice.