Penn State now owns a handful of .xxx domain names — but not for adult entertainment purposes.

With .xxx domains about to go on the market to the public, the university has been purchasing sites to prevent unaffiliated porn sites from making use of the school’s name.

Earlier this year, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers voted to create the .xxx domain in an effort to better flag sites with adult content, but with this decision came concern from universities and many other trademark owners.

“These domains are obviously going to be used with adult entertainment. Schools as well as other trademark owners have done so much to protect and promote their brand,” Michael Drucker, vice president and associate counsel for The Collegiate Licensing Company, said. “They don’t want that brand to be associated with the adult entertainment business.”

ICANN took this concern into consideration, and before making the domain names available to the public, the company offered trademark owners the opportunity to purchase sites containing their trademarked names.

“They provided a period of time, the Sunshine B period, which allowed owners of registered trademarks that chance to purchase domain names that included their trademarks before opening the .xxx sale to the public,” Jeffrey Hermann, director of university relations and member of the University Licensing Committee, said.

This sunshine period opened in September, at which time Penn State purchased four .xxx domains: Penn State, PSU, Nittany Lions and The Pennsylvania State University.

“These are the most popular of our federally registered trademarks. The committee [the University Licensing Committee] felt this was a good opportunity to protect the Penn State brand from possible negative associations,” Hermann said.

Each domain name cost the university $200, but Hermann said the price tag also to prevents associations that reflect poorly on the university. That purchase will also prevent anyone from buying a domain that includes the trademarked term with other words, such as nittanyliongirls.xxx.

“We also still have the standard dispute resolution process we can follow to remove any domain name which violates these or any of our other trademarks,” Hermann said.

The sunshine period only applied to trademarks that were already federally registered, in other words, not just any name could be purchased, Drucker said.

“Penn State has an excellent federal registration portfolio, so they are able to protect themselves,” Drucker said.

The .xxx domain names will become available to the public starting Dec. 6.