Last week, some legislation was passed through quietly, that could have a significant impact upon businesses, when it comes to protecting their online trademarks.For Icann, the governing body for domain names, this represents the biggest change of the internet naming system in 26 years.
Top-level domain names:
From January 2013, companies will be able to apply for a customised internet name. For example we could apply for .morellodigital, Virgin for .virgin etc. This frees companies up from the current restrictions of .com and .net, among others.
In terms of creating these “top-level domain names” costs are expected to be a whopping $500,000, including a $185,000 application fee.
Nor is this going to be confined to companies. Cities (London – .london or New York .nyc) can take advantage of this new opportunity as well.
Costs are a concern:
Although the costs for small businesses clearly will not be as high, this does constitute as an extra cost. And potentially businesses will be left with no choice but to buy the domain relevant to them. Purchasing and owning a new top-level domain name will be much cheaper than a protracted legal battle with a cybersquatter.
Cybersquatters excited by the potential:
Cybersquatters are the term coined for those people that buy up domain names speculatively in the hope that they can resell to those that actually need at a profit. It is surprising that this practice is allowed to go on so freely, given that it effectively holds businesses to ransom. These opportunists can name their price when it comes to selling the domains. Sky for example, would not be able to operate as effectively with anything other than Sky.com as their domain. They could but any other term is not as relevant. So if you owned the domain 15 yrs ago, you could name your price!
Going to the highest bidder:
Another potential flaw in this new opportunity is that it has been decided that ownership of popular names will be decided by auction. So not only will the costs potentially be sky-high, but somewhat farcically, you may be stripped of the opportunity to own the domain name most relevant to your business.