Domain Names as Internet Properties Essay

What atomic number 18 your long margin plans for your knowledge celestial sphere reference? Do you rest to convey the hit and the goodwill associated with it to an interest buyer or bequeath it your heirs? by chance you intend to use the land shout to secure a loan for a business expansion or for your tykes college tuition. You may be in for a surprise. The intellectual property federation asserts that field of operation call, as tooth root indicators, be akin to trade prints. However, trademark law cannot be effectively grafted on to domain names because of the discrepancies over geographical boundaries and context-sensitive use.In rank for a trademark adjustment to issue, the mark moldiness be used in interstate commerce to identify the source of a class of goods or services. superposable trademarks can co-exist so long as they argon associated with non-competing showcases of goods or services or are used in distinguishable geographic areas. orbit names are registered on a first-come, first-served basis. The first undivided or company to complete the registration template for an available name gets the fillet of sole good to be associated with it. For a bonny fee, currently hovering at $10 a year, the registrant can brand and propagate the name in a worldwide marketplace.The registrant receives the exclusive right to use that name for a website presence, global e-mail, and network file transfers. exactly every domain name must be unique, and it is this technical requirement that makes domain names potentially valuable resources which are substantively different from trademarks. Compaq Computer Corp paying $3. 35 million in July 1998 for rights to ALTAVISTA. COM, purchased from a California start-up called Alta Vista Technology. The transaction include existing traffic of a half million visitors a day who were already expecting to find the Alta Vista search railway locomotive at that domain name.As the harm bar for domain names rises, NSIs customers may resist being font to the vagaries of the registrars feudal regime. dewy-eyed and unencumbered ownership endows the registrant with a type of predictable, if limited, sovereignty. Through legislation and judicial acknowledgment, registrants who accumulate certain individual responsibilities should be allowed a perpetually renewable and assignable right to enjoy this new source of wealth. many an(prenominal) domain names have occasion the cornerst ace of multimillion-dollar business plans. In the ensconce of 1999, VirtualVineyard of Palo Alto, California, acquired Wine.Com of Napa, primarily for its domain name. While the $3. 3M-plus accomplishment included an operating business, the CEO of Wine. Com estimated that virtually 70 percent of his companys value was its name. The current controversies over domain names highlight the interplay of engineering accomplishment, law, economics and politics. motor lodge opinions trail societys changes and conu ndrums resulting from technology of recent vintage. Yet, nearly everyone agrees on one point domain names are caught in a legal thicket. If domain names are property, then existing contracts such as NSIs jumpy Service 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 each convoluted domain name dispute onwards the court may be prison-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 cow? Patents. com. Retrieved November 26, 2006 from http//www. patents. com/pubs/jmls. htm