Getting the Right People in the Room
Si Futures arranged a session between the client, LexSynergy — a specialist domain registrar with deep registry relationships and brand protection expertise — and the client’s own legal team. A second session followed with trademark specialists and brand protection lawyers from LexSynergy’s side. Those conversations brought in a level of domain law and registry expertise that goes beyond what any internal team or generalist IT partner would typically have access to.
What emerged shaped the direction of the project. The client had arrived with a considerable list of domain registrations covering variants and geographic combinations of their brand name. The specialist input from LexSynergy refined that list toward registrations that would carry genuine legal standing and enforceable trademark protection, and introduced an approach to ongoing protection that the client had not previously had access to.
A long domain name is not a trademark. Owning a variant does not protect the brand. Legal footing in the domain space requires the trademark — and building the protection architecture around it rather than around a list of registrations that grows obsolete with every new TLD release.
Domain Brand Protection That Holds Automatically
Global Block Plus was the mechanism. With a registered trademark in place, LexSynergy applies a global block against the brand name across the entire domain landscape — currently covering 710 extensions. Anyone attempting to register [brand].app, [brand].dev, [brand].crypto, or any of the other covered extensions through any registrar in the world simply cannot. The domain is not shown as taken. It is unavailable. No annual renewal across hundreds of individual domains. No DNS management overhead. The protection holds automatically as new extensions launch.
The Global Block Plus tier extends this further, to 108,603 variants. That number requires explanation, because it is where the threat becomes less obvious. The additional coverage addresses homograph attacks — registrations that use characters from different international character sets that are visually identical to standard Latin letters. An attacker can register a domain where a letter in the brand name is replaced with a character from a different script that looks, in an email client and in a browser address bar, exactly like the original. With valid SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records configured, that email passes every spam and authentication filter. It arrives in a client’s inbox looking entirely legitimate, because from a delivery standpoint, it is. The 108,603 figure represents the scale of that character-set attack surface. Global Block Plus closes it.
Monitoring, Discovery, and Active Response
Alongside the registrations and the global block implementation, LexSynergy established a monthly watch service. Domain activity associated with the brand is monitored and reported continuously. During the registration process, one domain extension was identified as already held by a third party. Rather than accepting that situation, it was added to the watch list with a back-order placed and an intent assessment underway.
A Fundamentally Different Protection Posture
The client’s brand protection position is now fundamentally different to where it was. The global domain landscape that was previously open — where any registrar, in any country, could accept a registration that traded on the brand name — is now closed for covered extensions. Future TLD launches are automatically protected. The character-set attack surface that even experienced IT professionals often overlook is blocked. And the one situation where a third party arrived first is being actively tracked rather than quietly accepted.
The work is done. The monitoring continues. And anyone attempting to register the next domain extension that launches will find the brand already there.
