Information company Thomson Reuters announced today that they bought brand protection company and corporate domain registrar Mark Monitor for an undisclosed sum.

“This acquisition marks the beginning of a transformational shift within the Intellectual Property & Science business of Thomson Reuters,” said Chris Kibarian, president, IP & Science, Thomson Reuters. “It is emblematic of our strategy to accelerate innovation and growth within our business.”

“Thomson Reuters already helps thousands of companies create, manage and protect hundreds of billions of dollars worth of intellectual property assets,” said David Brown, president, Intellectual Property Solutions, Thomson Reuters. “With the addition of online brand protection solutions like those provided by MarkMonitor, we’ll be able to deliver advanced technologies to keep customers one step ahead of brandjackers and reduce the enormous risk posed to brands online.”

The MarkMonitor team, led by President and Chief Executive Officer Irfan Salim, will join Thomson Reuters.

Mark Monitor submitted a number of new TLD application on behalf of corporate clients

See the full release after the jump. [via TechCrunch, hat tip to VSDHoldings]

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Registrar Mark Monitor acquired the domain name Lync.com through a stealth entity (“Name Advisers“) on behalf of Microsoft, as evidenced by recent whois changes. Lync is the name of Microsoft’s latest “unified communications” product. The Name Advisers’ site states: “Name Advisers provides product branding and domains services to the small business market.” I’m not quite sure if Microsoft counts as Small Business ;-)

[Thank you George]

As we reported previously, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer let more than 50 of their .org domain names expire in March 2009. The names were brought to DNN’s attention as they appeared on a SnapNames auction list . After expiring several of the domains appear to have been registered by SnapNames and now are in the ownership of Pfizer (such as Viagra.org) However, several names did expire and end up in the hands of other new registrants.   Two of these names, Pfizer.org and Celebrex.org (a Pfizer brand), ended up in the hands of Samir Kumar.

A recent UDRP filing however has stopped Kumar.  Pfizer prevailed in the arbitration and the names have been ordered to be transferred back, although whois records still indicate Kumar’s information and contain a “domain for sale” notation on their records.

Based on the whois history of Viagra.org, Pfizer.org and Celebrex.org (only 3 of the dozens of .org names that expired) , previous to these domains expiring, the domain portfolio was under the managment of a brand/domain protection and managment company, CSC Corporate Domains. Interestingly, the domains now appear to be controlled under MarkMonitor’s services, a competitor of CSC.