Although the internet has been around for over a decade, the concept of ‘Domain Name’ is still an enigma to many. From the average person’s point of view, it is understood as the internet address belonging to any specific person or entity. Though this may seem easy to understand, conceptually, Domain Names are quite technical in nature. Domain name is a name given to the”Internet Protocol address”or in short ‘IP address ‘of every computer having internet accessibility and is identified through a combination of numbers and for ease of identification, are allotted names. A trade mark as defined under The Trade Marks Act, 1999 should be capable of distinguishing the goods or service of one from another and should be able to establish a connection or indication in the course of trade between the goods or services and the person claiming to have some right as proprietor for using the mark. Similarly, a domain name is required to be different and distinguished from other names present on the domain of the web and should be corresponding with a bona fide offering of goods or services.
A Top Level Domain is the string of characters located in the right-most side of a domain name, and represents the “source” within the hierarchal structure of a domain name. There are two types of TLDs: gTLD (generic Top Level Domain), based on usage application or sector, such as”.com,” and TLD
(country code Top Level Domain), based on country or region, such as “.jp.” The advent of domain name registration has initiated a new set of problems for the registered trade mark users/owners. Time is an important factor in the registration of a domain name and a policy of first come first serve basis is used for registering a name as a domain name. Keeping this in mind, many people registered well known domain names which resembled well known trademark/ names. Accordingly, they were granted/ allotted a particular domain name.
Due to this policy a trend for ‘Cyber Squatting’ evolved in which an unlicensed user registered a trademark as a domain name in order to pressure the bona fide trade mark owner/user and extort money or other benefits from such lawful trade mark owner/user. Since there was no connection between trade mark registration and domain name registration, such domain names did not come under objection at the time of registration. This loophole in the procedure further encouraged cyber squatters to demand exorbitant prices for selling these domain names to the
registered trade mark owners/users who were desperate to protect their goodwill. Realising a need for change and in light of the aforesaid circumstances, a strong recommendation was made to formulate laws for regulating the domain names in cyber space. Accordingly, ICANN (International Community for Assigned Names and Numbers), Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (“UDRP“), came into existence with an object to streamline the process of acquiring domain names.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a non profit corporation headquartered in Marina Del Reyp46_icann, California, United States that was created on September 18, 1998, and incorporated on September 30, 1998to be able to oversee a number of Internet-related tasks previously performed directly on behalf of the U.S. government by other organizations, notably the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).ICANN is responsible for managing the assignment of domain names and IP addresses. ICANN’s tasks include responsibility for IP address space allocation, protocol identifier assignment, top-level domain name system management, and root server system management functions. To date, much of its work has concerned the introduction of new generic top-level domains (TLDs).
On the current meeting of the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in Brussels, representatives of the domain p46_wordregistrar Key-Systems actively join the debates on the current issues of the Internet business. Among these issues are especially the implementation of internationalized top-level domains (TLDs) and the introduction of new generic TLDs. Among these issues are especially the implementation of internationalized top-level domains (TLDs) and the introduction of new generic TLDs. Lets have a look at recent discussions at ICANN , Brussels and its effect on managing IP.
Web site operators will be able to register domain names written entirely in Chinese characters, including the final characters to the right of the last dot, in a matter of months. The board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) granted approval to three different organizations– China Internet Network Information Center, Hong Kong Internet Registration Corporation and Taiwan Network Information Center –to create Chinese-language top-level domains (TLDs).
China uses a script that represents words as one or more ideograms, but the DNS (Domain Name System) infrastructure stores domain names using the “Latin” alphabet, the 26 letters from A to Z. That suits Internet users in English-speaking countries, but poses problems in countries for which the official language is written using other scripts, such as Chinese ideograms, Arabic script or the Cyrillic characters used in Russian. European countries such as Österreich (Austria) or España (Spain) also have problems with the Latin alphabet, as they use accented characters to spell their official name in their own language.
The Chinese-language interationalized domain names (IDNs) are not the first IDNs that ICANN has approved. In April it allowed Egypt, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to create country-code top-level domain names in their own script. There are many more applications for IDNs pending, Beckstrom said, including requests from Tunisia, Qatar, Jordan and the Occupied Palestinian Territory for the creation of IDNs in Arabic, from Sri Lanka for names in Sinhalese and Tamil, and from Thailand to add its name in Thai.
ICANN Board Approves Dot-XXX Top – level Domain for Porn
The internet could soon have its own red light district after the “.xxx”suffix was approved – though pornography companies are not keen to use it. Icann, the organisation which determines what”top-level domains” (TLDs) such as .com or .uk can be added to the internet announced today that it will begin the process of registering xxx by making checks on ICM Registry, the company that wants to run the domain and sell registrations. Yet pornography is already plentiful online. One of the most valuable domains in the early days was sex.com, which was the object of a bitter battle in which rivals battled it out to own what was seen as a honey pot for surfers. In 2007 porn.com was sold for $12m. But many pornography companies are unhappy with the idea of a dedicated space online because they expect that as soon as .xxx is implemented, conservative members of the US Congress will lobby to make any sex-related website re-register there and remove itself from other domains such as .com or .org.
