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[comments-wgb] Report of Working Group B
In the Sunrise Plus Twenty proposal trademark
owners will have first crack at domains related to their registered
trademarks.
So what if Kodak goes out and registers kodak.firm,
kodak.rec, kodak.arts, etc...
What is the point of the new gTLD if they are just
duplicates of the .COM domain?
If my business is located at 123 Main Street
in Toronto then I could, if I wanted, go out and buy the property at 123 Main
Street in Montreal just so customers could find my business a little
easier. This obviously would get a little expensive to do across N.America
or the world.
But the cost of internet
domains are inexpensive enough that a corporation could acquire hundreds or
thousands of domains related to their names, products or services. But
what does this leave for the little guy?
I think that customers are smart enough to locate
Kodak at kodak.com Leave the new domains to the little guys
and for businesses that may not have even existed a few years ago (and thus
didn't have a crack at a .com domain).
If a business goes out and registers kodak.firm and
then proceeds to sell film or related equipment then any court should have no
trouble resolving this. Obviously this business is attempting to
benefits off of Kodak.com's name and reputation.
If a business goes out and registers kodak.firm
because it happens to be a restaurant on the corner of Kodak Avenue then I don't
see the problem.
Customers will continue to look for multinationals
at the .COM domain. That is why these things sell for up to several
million each.
Don't underestimate the general public. They
can figure these things out.
The more gTLDs that you create then the less
relative value that these domains will have.
What ever you do, DO NOT open up one new gTLD as a
test. As such, it will have a very high relative value and may taint the
entire process by suggesting that a wide expansion will have similar
problems.