A domain name is an extremely significant corporate asset, with as much inherent value as your most important trademarks/trade names, and is as of much importance to your customers as your company name itself!!! Protect your domains just as you would your other valued assets.

• Do you have an inventory of all domain names owned by the company? Yes / No
• If the answer is no, you should prepare a listing of all of your corporate domain names, both active and inactive. (Go through past expense details/bills to prepare a complete inventory. Many organizations do not have such an inventory, and cannot protect what they donÕt know of.)
• Include details on where each domain is registered (i.e. the ÒregistrarÓ), the Òexpiration dateÓ and contact information (Schedule A) Use this WHOIS tool to determine this information (link to easyDNS query site)
• Immediately renew all domains less than six months; consider multi-year renewals when doing so
• Establish a renewal schedule and assign responsibility for all domain names to a corporate owner, who is responsible for renewal and the addition of all new domain names
• Consider consolidating all domains with a single registrar to streamline administration, and to achieve volume discounts on domain renewals

• Do you have the same contact information for all of your domains, and is this information up to date? Yes / No
• No? Make sure the same name and contact information is used for all of your domain registrations, and that all contact information is accurate and up to date
• Use an email address that is under your control. DonÕt use the name of an employee or consultant, but instead, a generic name and e-mail address (i.e. domain-manager@abc.om)
• DO NOT use the email address of an Internet service provider, or a free email service such as Yahoo, since such accounts can expire with inactivity, or change as the result of utilizing a new service. This means that you might not receive important messages concerning the status or renewal of your domains.
• Put in place procedures to ensure that all domain e-mail addresses are monitored on a regular basis for any e-mail, as renewal notices are often sent to these addresses

• Do you have a corporate policy and procedure as to who can register domain names on behalf of the company? Yes / No
• If no, establish such a policy, and communicate the policy to all affected stakeholders within the company. This helps to ensure that all domains are properly managed, and fall within renewal procedures as established by the organizations.

• Have you registered domain names, including all variations in the .com, .biz, .info, .net hierarchies. (Schedule B) Yes / No
• If no, consider the business case for doing so. (cost of domain registration vs. intellectual property risk or misuse of corporate/trade names)

• Have you prepared a listing of all corporate tradenames / copyrights and other important brand / corporate names, and determined if you have protected the domain name for each trademark/copyright? Yes / No
• If no, consider the business case for doing so. (cost of domain registration vs. intellectual property risk or misuse of corporate/trade names)

• Does the inventory above show any potential copyright/trademark/corporate name infringements? Yes / No
• Are there any parody sites in existence that you might need to be concerned with? Yes / No

• Do you have a budget for domain acquisitions, renewals, disputes? Yes / No
• No: Assign responsibility for all domain management/ expiration/renewals/approval of new domains to one department individual, and provide appropriate budgetary authority

• Does your company buy and sell various corporate entities, subsidiaries, divisions, trademarks or copyrights? Yes / No
• Yes? Establish a corporate policy that provides for similar domain inventory issues for any acquisition or divestiture.
• Ensure that acquisition team is familiar with domain name property, and renewal/registration issues
• Determine what warranties might need to be provided by the seller to ensure that there are no risks with future potential domain name disputes.
  
  Schedule A
  Domain Name Inventory
  
  

  Domain name	Domain name Registrar	Expiry Date	Admin contact	Technical contact	Billing contact	DNS Servers
  example.com

  
  Schedule B
  Domain Name Protection Grid
  
  

  .com	.ca	.biz	.info	.net	.org	.tv
  example.com