Domain Names as Internet Properties Essay

What atomic number 18 your long term plans for your domain name? Do you expect to convey the name and the goodwill associated with it to an interested buyer or bequeath it your heirs? Perhaps you intend to use the domain name to well(p) a loan for a business expansion or for your chelas college tuition. You may be in for a surprise. The intellectual seat community asserts that domain call, as source indicators, be akin to assay- reticks. However, trademark law ejectnot be effectively grafted on to domain name calling because of the discrepancies over geographical boundaries and context-sensitive use.In order for a trademark registration to issue, the mark must be used in interstate commerce to break the source of a class of goods or services. Identical trademarks can co-exist so long as they atomic number 18 associated with non-competing types of goods or services or are used in unlike geographic areas. farming names are registered on a first-come, first-served basis. The first individual(a) or company to have it away the registration template for an available name gets the sole right to be associated with it. For a reasonable fee, currently hovering at $10 a year, the registrant can brand and propagate the name in a worldwide marketplace.The registrant receives the grievous bodily harm right to use that name for a website presence, global e-mail, and network shoot transfers. But every domain name must be unique, and it is this technological requirement that makes domain names potentially valuable resources which are substantively different from trademarks. Compaq Computer Corp paid $3. 35 million in July 1998 for rights to ALTAVISTA. COM, purchased from a California start-up called Alta purview technical schoolnology. The transaction included existing traffic of a half million visitors a day who were already expecting to find the Alta Vista search engine at that domain name.As the price turf out for domain names rises, NSIs customers may resi st being substance to the vagaries of the registrars feudal regime. Simple and unencumbered ownership endows the registrant with a type of predictable, if limited, sovereignty. Through legislation and judicial acknowledgment, registrants who meet certain individual responsibilities should be allowed a perpetually renewable and assignable right to enthrall this new source of wealth. Many domain names have turn over the cornerstone of multimillion-dollar business plans. In the fall of 1999, VirtualVineyard of Palo Alto, California, acquired Wine.Com of Napa, primarily for its domain name. term the $3. 3M-plus acquisition included an operating business, the CEO of Wine. Com estimated that about 70 part of his companys value was its name. The current controversies over domain names highlight the interplay of engineering, law, economics and politics. Court opinions trail societys changes and conundrums resulting from technology of recent vintage. Yet, nearly everyone agrees on one p oint domain names are caught in a legal thicket. If domain names are property, then existing contracts such as NSIs harsh dish out Agreement must be rewritten.Although the implications of the Umbro decision are yet to be fully assessed, and NSIs appeal remains to be heard, the magistrate recognized that individually knotty domain name dispute before the court may be breaking new legal ground. References Unknown (1999). Mortgages for domain names. BBC Sci/Tech News. Retrieved November 26, 2006 from http//news. bbc. co. uk/2/hi/science/nature/533455. stm Oppedahl, C. (1997). Remedies in Domain Name Lawsuits How is a domain name like a browbeat? Patents. com. Retrieved November 26, 2006 from http//www. patents. com/pubs/jmls. htm