Domain Name News

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) launched an evaluation of Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) on Monday, October 15, 2007, allowing Internet users to type 11 new languages in the part of the Web address that comes after the dot—top level domains (TLDs).

The 11 new languages are: Arabic; Chinese (simplified and traditional); Greek; Hindi; Japanese; Korean; Persian; Russian; Tamil; and Yiddish.

Prior to this evaluation period, non-Roman characters could only be used “before the dot,” meaning that top-level labels like “.com” or “.net” had to be written using Roman characters (e.g., ョ本流.com). This change means that an Internet user may write an entire domain name with characters used to write their own language.

The availability of 11 new character sets for TLDs will create the opportunity to register trademark-protected domain names written entirely in these new languages. It will also vastly increase the set of alternate character repertoires available for cybersquatters to create “off-by-one” identifiers, often with invisibly different homographs.

ICANN anticipates allowing for registrations of IDNs in mid-2008. Although no actions need to be taken now, trademark owners should consider registering for their core brands in all available languages – not only to increase their market exposure and reach more consumers on an international level, but also for defensive purposes. We will provide more information as the period for registration approaches.