This afternoon I diligently sat through the 2008 year in review seminar of trademark and copyright law for Oregon lawyers.  (As lawyer seminars go, this one is actually slightly tolerable.)  One of the most interesting subjects discussed was the ongoing proposal to expand the Internet via the creation of new top level domains (TLDs) by ICANN. Or, as written on one of the presenter’s slides: “ICANN Authorizes Top Level Domain Names to Proliferate Like Bunnies!”  And why?  Well, the Internet is running out of real estate.

For some background, this post follows up closely on my previous post a few months back about ICANN’s plans for expansion.  As promised, in February ICANN considered the first round of public comments on its plan, and provided its analysis of those comments.  Some of that analysis was reviewed in today’s seminar, and here are some highlights from the seminar about the implications of the plan, focusing on the impact on trademark owners.

• There will be many, many, many new TLDs (implication: the Internet will be big-banging soon)
• Any public or private-section organization can obtain a TLD, although the application process will be onerous, and fees likely be somewhere in the area of $185,000 (to start)
• ICANN plans to start accepting applications sometime this year
• Current trademark owners likely will be able to object to prospective new TLDs, thus policing their brands

On that last point, it appears that ICANN, following the first round of comments, set up a task force called the “Implementation  Recommendation Team (IRT),” whose job is “to develop and propose solutions to the over-arching issue of trademark protection in connection with the introduction of new generic top level domain  names (gTLDs).”  The IRT will draft a report by April 24 for comment and produce a final report by May 24.

For those trademark owners concerned about how their marks could be affected, that report will certainly be important.  We’ll plan on reading the report on May.

For more on the IRT, check out ICANN’s link here.  To give credit where it’s due, we found the link through the new Mind+Machines blog (apparently taking over for the old names@work blog).  By the way, Mind+Machines… looks like these guys are a really well-positioned startup.

Tags: expansion of domains, ICANN, TLD, Trademarks

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