ISSCIO December Blog: Recounting 2011

It is quite emotional to be writing the last blog of the year 2011. Another year has passed for the Intellectual Property Portal ISSCIO.com. Many things were achieved in the life of the site and some - experienced a backlash.

January - February

ISSCIO has started its path in 2011 with the increased emphasis on the new gTLD Topics and many functional additions to the pages, such as adding News and Links sections to the Topics.It is early to talk about success or failure of the News and Links sections: there were just some contributed by experts, yet we would like to consider it as a space for the future useful additions. From January the main workload and responsibility for the website transferred to myself, yet greatly supported and supervised by Lucas.

March

The biggest black spot of the year 2011 was, of course, the earthquake of March 11 that took lives of more than 20 000 people in Japan and left the northern part of the country in rattles, and the aftermath of herein. As an immediate result, General Manager of ISSCIO Lucas got stuck in the airport for 2 days on his flight to San Francisco; and I myself had to walk for 7 hours to reach my house with the transportation system in Tokyo and surrounding areas collapsed. Although we wish to think we could quickly restore the work on the site, we must admit this was the time when the work was going the slowest.

In March, ICANN approved the .XXX domain which until recently continued to be one of the most popular topics in ISSCIO.

April - July

Consequent months showed some positive improvements for ISSCIO in terms of increased popularity in Google. Furthermore, we implemented a clearer concept of ISSICO: “FIND”, “BE FOUND”, “CONNECT” that, we hope, explains better the essence of the site.

August - December

In the second half of the year we also included the Featured Topics, along with Twitter posts on ISSCIO front page. We want to believe that featuring on the front page heps the companies listed in ISSCIO acquire new clients, while the Twitts provide with the most current news.

We proudly acknowledge there were over 100 topic editions this year alone for contributing to which we are very grateful to our clients and colleagues.

Last, but not least, Thank you for your continuous support, participation and contributions to the site! We wish you all the very best in your business and personal life!

Olga Yevetska

ISSCIO Operations Manager

Why it is important to edit ISSCIO Topics

One of the most significant changes that occurred in ISSCIO over the course of the last month was almost tripled increase in visits to the site, starting from the second Friday of November.

We could see two reasons that contributed to such an increase in visits to the site. One of the reasons was the changed rules of Google SE. Summarized in a couple of words, Google added importance to the freshness of the site cutting on the “appropriate keyword” principle. As such, the page on the appropriate topic that has been updated the last would occupy the top position in Google as opposed to the page that has the best proportion of appropriate keywords.

Although the change in the values of Google could be arguable, the fact remains that there is now an increased importance for ISSCIO topics to be constantly updated. ISSCIO.com currently has over 800 Topic pages, many of which has been updated in the last months. While we make sure to renew 2-5 Topics daily, it is very important for the Experts to contribute and renew information on the topic of their expertise. We thus encourage ISSCIO Experts to login and edit the information in ISSCIO.com, check the information added by others and update the pages with the useful links and news about domain names and trademarks in their respective countries. This way, we can hope that ISSCIO topics will remain on the high position in the Google Search and help the Experts gain new clients.

The second reason for the increased visits to ISSCIO was the start of Landrush stage for the domain name .XXX, currently the most popular ISSCIO Domain Name topic. As we have always been making sure to update this topic of high interest of the Internet community with the latest facts, it is no wonder ISSCIO received extraordinary amount of visits to its DotXXX page.

With the wishes of success in your business,

Olga Yevetska

ISSCIO Operations Manager

Increasing Your Chances of Getting Clients in ISSCIO

Please click on the image above to see a bigger picture of the graph.
Please go to www.isscio.com to see and use all of these features.

Olga Yevetska

ISSCIO Operations Manager

ISSCIO in September: Calm, Steady, Improved

The month of September was rather calm and steady for ISSCIO, yet we have got some important patterns that are worth mentioning. One of such patterns is the improvement in ISSCIO content. It was our greatest pleasure to see many editions of Trademark topics by ISSCIO experts. We have received exquisite and complete information that without a doubt will be useful for ISSCIO users and are grateful to those who contributed their time and knowledge!

September editions add to the number of approximately 60 edited topics in the months of June-September. We have also added a couple of new topics, DN and TM South Sudan, a move outlined by creation of the world’s youngest country to date, as well as six topics (DN and TM) of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba, Curacao and Sint Maarten. We are looking forward to including experts from these countries to ISSCIO as there are some more adjustments of ISSCIO topics planned in the near future.

Another event of September important for ISSCIO was the presence of a Brights Consulting representative He Yan on the 4th China Trademark Conference. Apart from other responsibilities, Ms.Yan was kindly introducing the concept of ISSCIO to the IP experts present there. She saw a significant interest in ISSCIO among the IP professionals that is already being translated in more expert accounts in ISSCIO.

Last but not least, we are extremely grateful to the experts who have contributed their opinions on the possible improvements in ISSCIO. We greatly appreciate and value your comments and suggestions that without a doubt will be a basis for the further betterment of ISSCIO.

Wishing you all the best of success in your business!

Olga Yevetska

ISSCIO Operations Manager

The Heat, the Beat and ISSCIO Growth (ISSCIO in Summer 2011)

As Japan calls to an end its time of summer vacations, exclusively hot weather and numerous summer festivals, ISSCIO team is ready for a busy autumn.

During the summer months ISSCIO was little by little raising its head in terms of visits to the site, number of experts and the overall site popularity. As for the visits, for instance, there was more than 20% increase over the course of July and first weeks of August, which perfectly fitted into the picture of close to 250 % increase in visits since the beginning of this year. We can only congratulate ourselves with such an amazing achievement and thank ISSCIO experts who contributed valuable information to the site.

The second half of August saw a little slow down in ISSCIO activity that we are hoping will increase in the closest weeks.

Using the time of summer vacations, we have conducted some checks of ISSCIO supporting systems.

Our final goal in doing so was a superior quality of communication with the experts through technically better functioning system of communication and more safely preserved database. Armed with the renewed confidence in improved ISSICO, we are stepping into the next phase of its development.

ISSCIO team is wishing you a pleasant start of the autumn and success in your business!

Olga Yevetska

ISSCIO Operations Manager

ISSCIO Featured Topics

Today, I would like to look a little closer at ISSCIO Featured Topics, one of the newest additions to ISSCIO homepage, their potential benefit for experts and the criteria we use for choosing the topics to include.

Essential benefit of ISSCIO Featured Topics is that it increases the opportunities for the expert company to “be found”. By being featured in the ISSCIO Homepage, a topic can be quickly accessed by all users and, if you are a Top Expert for that topic, users can see your company name after a single click.

We would like to provide information as useful as possible for the users, thus we feature topics, the information in which is complete or close to be completed. We also give additional priority to those topics that have been popular among users in the last months.

From the other side, we strive to feature information as current as possible. Thus we also feature the topics edited recently, with the condition that it also has complete information.

Generally, a Topic will remain as featured from 1 to 3 months, depending on the number of other good quality editions.

To get into the Featured Topics we encourage you to complete the topic of your expertise. Your edition will put your company into the Top Experts, so when the topic is featured, it will be found even more easily.*

ISSCIO Team will be happy to assist you in case you have any questions.

Olga Yevetska

ISSCIO Operations Manager

*Please note that your company can always be found through ISSCIO country or expert search. In case you have edited a topic, your company name is shown along the topic information in the list of Top Experts and seen by more potential clients.

ISSCIO Concept: Better Explained

As I have already mentioned in the previous Blog, we have comprised a concept of ISSCIO, that, as we thought, captured the essence of the site the best. I promised to describe the concept in my later blogs and fulfill my promise here.

The concept of Intellectual Property Portal ISSCIO is based on the three pillars that we call “FIND”, “BE FOUND” and “CONNECT”.

The first pillar, “FIND”, highlights a purpose of the site as a directory of practical Intellectual Property information and experts on Trademarks and Domain Names for every country. It is the part applicable to both experts and users of the site.

The second pillar, “BE FOUND”, is directed on ISSCIO experts. As a rule, IP firm representatives sign up or contact us to be listed in ISSCIO directory. They, then, help adding information on topics and get listed in the “Top Experts” list for each topic. As the majority of ISSCIO users arrive to the topics first, the “Top Experts” are easily seen by the users and thus easily “found” by them.

The last pillar, “CONNECT” is again directed on both users and experts. It highlights the interactive character of the site where it is possible to contact the experts on each Intellectual Property topic directly or interact with them in the forum (Q&A).

Furthermore, we tried to emphasize the main features of ISSCIO.com using the next 5 characteristics:

FREE
All the information is accessible for free on the internet

OPEN
Experts: Your firm can be found by everybody
Users: You can see profiles of all the experts

INTERACTIVE
Experts: Forum that allows you to interact with colleagues and potential clients
Users: Forum that allows you to interact with the experts

RANKS HIGH IN GOOGLE
Over 800 ISSCIO pages are shown for specific Intellectual Property searches

HELPS PROMOTING YOUR PRACTICES AT NO COST
Experts: All the activities in ISSCIO are free of charge, including featuring your firm along the information
Users: All the activities in ISSCIO are free of charge, including contacting the experts.


We would love to hear your feedback on our better explanation of ISSCIO, so please leave your comments here or write to us!

Wishing you all the best,

Olga Yevetska
ISSCIO Operations Manager

A Brief Update on Golden Week, INTA and ISSCIO Topics

Japan is in the midst of as called “Golden Week” right now, a week of tightly set national holidays and one of the two short periods of official vacations for company workers here. In this respect we do expect some slowing down in the overall activity of ISSCIO team. Yet, the work on some ISSCIO projects continues full-fledged: there is an upcoming INTA meeting to prepare for, among others.

We are planning to bring to the meeting a renewed concept of ISSCIO; I will reveal and explain this concept in the post following the conference. As far, the booklets are ready, along with, finally, my business cards. In the booklets that will be distributed on the INTA meeting, we tried to capture the essence of ISSCIO and briefly list the recent developments of the site.

One of such developments is the growing popularity of ISSCIO in Google that we found to go in almost perfect correlation with the content of the topics. In this respect, we are happy to tell that many topics have been edited by the experts recently who joined our efforts of completing the topics; we are very grateful to these experts for taking time and answering some ISSICO questions. Among others, the topics of DN: Croatia (http://isscio.com/TopicDetail?topic_url=DN:Croatia), TM: Azerbaijan and TM: Indonesia got edited with some questions completed in TM: Pakistan etc.

While there will be some other good news for ISSCIO coming soon, we wish you all the very best in your practices and, to our colleagues in Japan, a peaceful, relaxed and enjoyable vacations.

Olga Yevetska
ISSCIO Operations Manager

Reminiscing March: ISSCIO

This blog has been developed in order to record the way we developed the ISSCIO website, with no regard to the things on this way being the setbacks or breakthroughs. While it is mainly the developments that I talk in this blog, this time it is rather a mix of both.

As you know, the very tragic events happened in Japan on and after March 11 this year. And while the general manager Lucas Vall departed, with a one day-delay, to the U.S. for ICANN meeting the next day after the earthquake, I myself had followed the example of many others moving further to the south to escape recurring aftershocks and blackouts. Because of this, the activity of ISSCIO has been almost completely impaired for about two weeks and started to activate little by little just after that. It is finally reaching its full power right now, after the blackouts in Tokyo were stopped till summer.

The setback in ISSCIO activity has definitely had a negative impact on our IP community as we were not able to reach out to many of lawyers or continue working on new projects. Despite this, there was no dropping down in the visits to the site due to the increased popularity of ISSCIO topics in Google. The most popular topics in Google remain TM: Turkey and Cyprus (due to the very good information posted by experts in it), joined by a rising in popularity .XXX.

We are grateful to all of those who sent the warm mails of support after the disaster, thank you very much!

Wishing you all the very best in your business and hoping for further cooperation,

Olga Yevetska
ISSCIO Operations Manager

ICANN approved dot XXX: the post dot COM era Internet has begun

ICANN has approved, albeit after a long and arduous process, the adult industry top level domain dot XXX. If the ICANN policymaking process is not disrupted we should be able to see dot XXX domains sooner than later.

Many people actually oppose the dot XXX initiative raising some noble arguments, like freedom of speech or child abuse. I could go on and on with arguments in favor of and against these and other objections in relation to dot XXX.

But, no matter what side of the fence you stand on, if you are a content creator and trademark holder, one of the issues when a new space on the Internet becomes available is money. That is, because of the new real estate up for grabs, many foresee the need to secure domains, as a burden that they had better avoid.

In the case of dot XXX the problem actually lies in thinking of dot XXX in terms of the dot COM era. Content producers or right holders should stop thinking this way and realize how the post dot COM era of the Internet will (or should) work, especially with many more TLD coming in the (near) future. Let's face it; dot COM is the Wild Wild West. If dot XXX were to be defined under the same terms as dot COM, then it would be just adding land for bandits to roam freely.
But ICM Registry, the company behind dot XXX (to which I am not affiliated in any way), will verify those registering domains within dot XXX, and thus consumers will know that while inside a dot XXX domain, the content providers are legal and their transactions secure. There will be few typo domains trying to fish people, few parked domains, few spam mail from dot XXX illegal sites.

In the post dot COM era Internet users will be able to distinguish bad neighborhoods from good ones. In the case of dot XXX, an adult content user can feel secure when giving his credit card information to a dot XXX domain (as it is a verified company, that is legal and uses secure transactions), while he or she will think twice if it is a dot COM domain.

This actually could generates extra business for the content creators from risk-averse costumers. They should actually embrace this kind of space instead of oppose it (if they are actually verifiable, legal and secure companies). Dot XXX domains run at a premium price, yes, but there is no need to register typos or wildcards. Actually, thanks to an educated user that will stay within dot XXX for adult content, today's dot COM adult related domain portfolios, which include thousand of typos for protection purposes, become irrelevant. Thus, content creators can further save money by takings down domains in bad neighborhoods; after all users will not go there. Of course, companies can still keep their dot COM domains for their brands.

There is also an alternative for brand owners not related to the adult industry. They can actually block once their brands forever (for more on this check ISSCIO.com dot XXX TOPIC). So opting out is not that expensive. They should also expect minimum abuse within dot XXX as only verified companies can register domains, which won't risk their verified status or paid premium prices for illegal domains.

For new gTLDs we can expect similar scenarios. Again, with time (and internet users do learn fast) users will be able to distinguish good neighborhoods from bad ones, and brand owners should do the same. Brand owners should recognize where there is a good initiative and take advantages from it (or opt out). Also, they should probably ignore bad initiatives. Probably, no one will end up visiting those sites anyway (and the Google bus won't take you there neither). This way brand owners can minimize costs and potentially make gains.

I'm neither for nor against adult content per se. This is actually not a discussion about that. Dot XXX approval is a discussion about what kind of Internet we want. New gTLDs will allow us to make better choices by distinguishing what are good places for me (or my family) from those which I would like to keep at a distance. Dot XXX is a great step toward the post dot COM era and will allows us to learn important lessons we can use once thousand of new gTLDs become available.

Lucas Vall
ISSCIO General Manager

NOTE: We generally use this blog space to talk about the advances of ISSCIO.com community website. Since my colleges have been doing a great job in this area this time I wanted to shares with the IP community some personal insights on New gTLDs and dot XXX as they will shape the way IP professionals perform their jobs in the Internet.

Intellectual Property Newsletters, new gTLDs, and many more to add to ISSCIO resources

General Manager of ISSCIO, Lucas is busy working on other projects, so i am stepping in to post some updates on the journey of ISSCIO.

The first month of 2011 for ISSCIO was filled with the extensive work on projects related to changes in ISSCIO content and design. ISSCIO popularity as a community IP site is growing steadily.

ISSCIO is working in the direction of expanding its content. As you already know, ISSCIO is increasing the scope of the topics within its Domain Name sphere to include new gTLDs. New gTLD topics are expected to contain complete and useful information about the initiatives of proposed new top level domains, such as .green (dot green), .love (dot love), or .xxx (dot xxx). We are happy to acknowledge that those behind some of the New gTLD initiatives have already edited their topics, including ICM Registry that helped us with .xxx initiative. We are grateful to all those who shared information on ISSCIO and hope for further cooperation.

Another addition to the content of ISSCIO is including of NEWS and LINKS sections on the top of the information about Trademarks and Domain Names in each topic. NEWS and LINKS are expected to become another useful resource of information for ISSCIO users. As such, we are including the links to “Whois” domain name check for each country as well as the links to the governmental IP institutions, trademarks and domain names-related legal documents and many others. We encourage you to include links to your favorite Intellectual Property blogs or Newsletters in the LINKS section.

Related to the collection of links, we are currently working on the RESOURCE AREA within ISSCIO. This area will include a collection of links to useful resources such as Official Trademark Search Pages, IP blogs, IP Newsletters, etc. There will be some changes to design of ISSCIO as well. We are hoping to get your feedback and suggestions on the content and changes to ISSCIO.

As you could see, we are constantly working on the quality and the scope of ISSCIO as a global portal of IP information. At the same time, ISSCIO content relies on your contribution and we would like to once again encourage you to share information: edit topics, send us the links to your favorite blogs and newsletters. We will be happy to upload the information for you in case you would like to send it by mail to us, and upgrade your ranking.


Olga Yevetska
ISSCIO Operation Manager