Domain names, the unique strings of characters used to identify addresses on the Internet, are hot property. The recent high profile sales of domain names like wine.com, business.com and autos.com for amounts reaching well into the millions has made this clear. While domain names do not fall into any of the classic categories of intellectual property, they are often equally valuable to companies and raise a complex set of legal issues which are only just beginning to come to the attention of courts and legislators in Australia and around the world.
All email addresses and world wide web addresses use domain names. Let's say there is a large American company called Largeco Inc. It has registered the domain name ‘largeco.com’. The homepage of its website could therefore be at www.largeco.com and the general manager's email address may be [email protected]. Like phone numbers, no two domain names can be alike, as the domain name identifies a unique site on the Internet. However,
