ICANN Opens Up Domain Name Availability With Personalized TLDs
In response to businesses' growing frustration with the limited availability of simple internet domain names, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) plans to sell new top-level domain (TLD) names.
Domain names have historically ended with these popular TLDs: .com, .net, and .edu. Currently, there are only 21 TLDs. ICANN proposes to make "personalized" TLDs available to any business with $185,000. Allowing a business to have their name become the TLD opens up an enormous, and possibly endless, combination for domain names. For example, a famous fast food chain can end their domain name in ".mcdonalds." Subdomain names for the TLD can also be available to identify a particular business, like "bankofamerica.bank."
The availability of personalized TLDs will become a nightmare from the intellectual property enforcement standpoint. The increasing number of domain names means additional time and money to monitor misappropriation, and to protect customers from infringers.
In attempting a preemptive strike against infringers, ICANN proposes that it will review applicants who must argue why they should be awarded a particular TLD. Grounds for rejecting an applicant include: having a TLD that is confusingly similar to another, pursuing an immoral TLD like .xxx, or seeking a culturally or politically insensitive TLD.
Availability of these personalized TLDs was scheduled to launch this month.
