Haynes and Boone's Newsroom
ICANN's New Domains: Hefty Price, Dubious Benefit
05/18/2011
Jennifer M. Lantz
Law360, New York (May 18, 2011) -- ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the nonprofit organization that administers Internet addresses, is planning on expanding its generic top-level domains, or gTLDs, by allowing companies to apply to act as the registry for any gTLD they want.
No longer will the Internet be limited to .com, .net, .biz or any of the other 33 TLDs currently in existence. For example, Coca-Cola could apply to be the registry for “.Coke.” This change is likely to begin in 2012, if the draft of the new guidebook for applications is approved at ICANN’s June 20 meeting.
Unfortunately, any benefits provided by acting as the registry for a new gTLD may not outweigh the heavy cost, the required investment of resources, the likely lack of ability to actually control sub-domains within the new gTLD, and the legal battles over trademarks that will undoubtedly ensue.
To read the full article, click on the PDF linked below.