The Internet is changing in ways that companies need to closely monitor. As of the end of last September, there were more than 160 million domain names in existence.
Domain names that incorporate brand names or other trademarks may be valuable to businesses by allowing existing customers to easily locate them online. Conversely, generic domain names that identify a category or type of good or service may be valuable for launching a new business. In all cases, domain names may be used to attract new customers -- and may be used by competitors and cybersquatters to divert traffic to other locations.
ICANN has introduced new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) before. For example, the original list of gTLDs, which included .com, .org and .net were supplemented by a host of others, including .aero, .biz, .coop, .info, .museum, .name, and .pro following an announcement by ICANN in 2000. In 2005, ICANN subsequently approved a new list of gTLDs -- .cat, .jobs, .mobi, .post, .tel and .travel -- not all of which are yet live. By contrast, ICANN in 2007 rejected a proposal for the .xxx top-level domain.
The new expansion -- which is set to begin in December -- will not add specific gTLDs selected by ICANN. Rather, the system is being opened up so that any person, government or entity potentially could acquire its own top-level domain. Instead of using, say, Apple.com for the computer company's domain, the domain could simply become .apple. ICANN also will begin introducing internationalized domain names in 14 initial languages in 2009 and 2010, which are domain names represented by local language characters, including letters or characters from non-ASCII scripts (such as Arabic and Chinese).
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