We have just received an interesting alert from lawyers Barnes & Thornburg, thanks to the initiative of one of our very proactive clients – thank you Gordon New, Managing Director at Ronson Gears!
The news will be particularly relevant to a number of our clients, with offices in Asia and the Middle East for example, and relates to new developments on internationalised domain names (IDNs).
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has begun accepting requests from leaders around the world for new Internet extensions that represent their country name.
Currently, domain names only consist of characters from the Latin alphabet (a-z letters, 0-9 numbers and hyphens), whereas the new system would include the use of non-Latin characters.
This new development will provide opportunities for countries and territories to utilise country-code domains in their own language, such as Arabic, Chinese or Hindu.
These new additions are anticipated to become available to several countries over the next year.
Already, the Egyptian Minister of Communication, Tarek Kamel, has stated that Egypt will open the world’s first Arabic language Internet domain, using the Arabic words, “misr” meaning “egypt”.
Although overall acceptance of the IDNs is still tentative, Barnes & Thornburg have cautioned that this new development could provide further opportunities for cybersquatters to hold brand owners’ domain names to ransom.
David A. W. Wong from Barnes & Thornburg advises that, “The new IDNs are fertile ground for cybersquatters. Brand owners that have, or intend to have, an international presence should consider proactively registering new relevant IDNs before a cybersquatter or domainer does the same.”
Thanks to Gordon New and the American Gear Manufacturers Association (AGMA) for sending this information through.