Who Gets the First Bite of the .Apple Domain?
With the close of comments from the recent Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) meeting in Sydney, opinions still vary as to how the launch of new generic top level domains (gTLDs) will affect brand owners. The creation of such customized gTLDs may be exactly what you want. For others however, particularly those who use arbitrary terms as their brand name, this could be more problematic.
Take Apple® for example. Long before it was one of the top 30 most valuable brands in the world or had anything to do with a computer, an “apple” was just a fruit. Arguably scores of apple growers associations throughout the world primarily still think of “apple” as a fruit and would like to own the top level domain “.apple” if they could have it. Fact is, in the U.S. alone, the word “apple” is a registered trademark to several brand owners in 11 different classes, including music, computers, cosmetics, garden tools, horseshoes, tourism services, bags, rubber seals, tobacco, books and toys. So, who should get first bite of the “.apple” top level domain name? Or, should there be an .apple domain at all?
Explore this issue further in the latest issue of Thomson CompuMark’s Client Times Online, with an insightful article written by Foley & Lardner’s Jon Dudas, Jeff Kobulnick and Norm Rich.
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