What Is Defensive Registration?
Defensive registration is the practice of registering domain names you don't plan to actively use, but want to prevent others from registering. The goal is to protect your brand by controlling domains that could be used to impersonate, compete with, or confuse your business.
A typical defensive registration strategy includes: your brand name across major TLDs (.com, .net, .org, and relevant ccTLDs), common misspellings of your brand, plural/singular variations, and your brand combined with common prefixes or suffixes (get-, my-, -app, -hq).
The cost of defensive registrations is minimal compared to the potential damage of losing control of a key domain. At $10–$15 per domain per year, holding 5–10 defensive domains costs less than a single hour of legal work to recover one.
If your brand is Lumex.io: also register lumex.com, lumex.net, lumex.org, and lumex.ai at minimum.
Why This Matters for Startups
Start defending your brand from day one. At minimum, register your exact brand name on .com (if available), your primary operating TLD, and .net/.org. Add common misspellings once you have revenue. As you grow, expand to major ccTLDs in your target markets. The biggest mistake startups make is waiting until someone else registers a variant and either squats on it or builds a competing site. Prevention costs $10/year; recovery costs $1,000–$10,000+.
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