As the Internet has exploded onto the business landscape, companies are quickly being forced to build Web sites, to create Internet strategies, and to register relevant Internet domain names. With over eight million domain names registered so far, good names are highly-prized—witness the recent sale of business.com for $7.5 million. So what is the domain name system, and what legal issues does it raise?
What is a Domain Name? Domain names are the convenient, human-readable combinations of letters and numbers that identify a location on the Internet, such as "hughesluce.com" or "yahoo.com." Most common domain names end with a dot and a series of three letters, such as .gov, .edu, .net, .org, or the ubiquitous .com. Each domain name corresponds to a series of numbers called an "Internet Protocol number" or "IP address" that serves as a routing address on the Internet. For example, the IP address for the domain name hughesluce.com is 208.35.145.201. By using this information, a
