ICANN Recommendations Could Significantly Increase New Generic Top-Level Domain Names

There was a time when companies only concerned themselves with the ".coms" and ".nets" of the world as part of their trade-mark and domain name strategies. But now, with specialized generic top-level domain names (gTLDs) like ".travel" and ".pro," it may be time for companies to re-examine their domain name portfolios. Indeed, with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) moving forward with the potentially dramatic expansion of gTLDs, this re-examination may become more pressing.

The ubiquitous "dot-something" is part of the Internet's domain name system (or DNS) that allows users to refer to website domain names (such as "www.mccarthy.ca") rather than cumbersome numeric Internet Protocol addresses assigned to each computer on the Internet. Along with the 20 gTLDs now in existence, somewhere close to 260 other top-level domains currently exist, including some 240