ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is meeting in San Francisco this week. A quick refresher: ICANN is an international non-profit organization that controls domain name registrations worldwide. The organization was formed in 1998; before that time, the U.S. government controlled domain naming. And here’s why retail leaders should care about ICANN: in 1998, there were an estimated 30 million computers on the Internet and approximately 70 million users. Now there are over half a billion servers attached to the Internet, and something approaching 2 billion users (not counting smart mobile device connections via cellular networks). In the context of retail, this proliferation of Internet users represents the approximate total available market for the non-store omni-channels. That’s a lot of people.

This week, ICANN will discuss changes to the gTLD, or generic Top Level Domain conventions. In plain language, the gTLD is the convention that has given us .com, .org, .gov, .net, etc. For some time now, warnings have been issued that the world would soon run out of available domain addresses, and so ICANN has been working since 2005 on a standard that would increase the number of gTLD’s available.

And that’s where it gets sticky. Even though ICANN is independent organization, governments across the globe want to influence how the organization defines the new gTLD’s, and ICANN has stoutly maintained its neutrality. For example, as recently as February 28 an Obama Administration proposal to give the U.S. veto rights over domain names was rejected. China and Kenya, among other countries, have threatened to propose that Internet domain name controls be handed over to the United Nations’ International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The entire debate has a political flavor to it. And of course, the media is atwitter over a proposal to add domains like .xxx and .gay.

Brand and Trademark Issues

Aside from the debates over control of the gTLD, there is also a debate going on about the relationship between new domain names and trademark protection. Some organizations might want to apply for domain names that support their brand (a theoretical example: WMT, for Walmart). In 2008, the RILA (Retail Industry Leaders Association) organization CEO Paul Twomey sent a letter to ICANN stating:

…we fear that a dramatic expansion of the number of domain names will force our companies to collectively spend millions of dollars to purchase additional, unnecessary domains and to fend off greater numbers of abuses than exist today. A proliferation of domain names exacerbates issues consumers and businesses have with the practice of phishing. Specifically, last year, phishing attacks cost American consumers and business an estimated $3.2 billion…. “

In its letter, RILA made a number of suggestions to protect brands and trademarks, and subsequently, last November the ICANN Board adopted a resolution that only after trademarks had undergone substantive review would organizations get their applications for a new gTLD approved. Rod Beckham, CEO of ICANN, recently explained to the San Francisco Chronicle:

We have agreed to create a global marks database. By marks we mean trademarks and service marks. … If you get a document to show that you own the trademark or service mark, you get to put it into a global database. Once it’s in the system, you will be notified if anyone tries to register your name. That’s the first time in human history that a global marks database has been created to notify owners of events that could affect them. “

That puts ICANN into the trademark evaluation business, and the government of Germany (for one) doesn’t think that’s a good idea. Recently, the secretary of the German Federal Government’s Ministry of Economics and Technology sent a letter to ICANN stating that the trademark issue, “if not resolved, would make a decision to introduce new high-level domain names highly problematic “.

Worth Watching

There are no easy answers to all of this, at least that RSR knows about. Our only suggestion to retail leaders is to pay attention to this issue, talk to their representative retail trade organizations and ask them what their position is, and if an opportunity arises, lend their voice to the discussion — before it gets decided for the industry.