[comments-wipo] Comments

I am a domain reseller and have been in the business of buying and selling domain names for about 2 years. The one thing that has always been consisent in this market (which helps viability of the internet) is that there has always been the .com/.net/.org/.edu/.mil names (not to mention the assigned country specific TLD's).

Trademark infringement and dilution of a business name would happen if new TLD's are assigned. There can be no experimentation...once you have opened the pandora's box...it will remain open and cause problem's not only for trademark infringement, but as a consumer I wouldn't know whether to go to coke.pop, coke.com, coke.shop .The consumer would suffer as well as the person selling the product...Only the companies with massive budgets would be able to market their businesses online....Alot of people think that domain resellers are against opening the market because they hold coveted names....Not me....I have been in business long enough to know that Brand Recognition is vital to any business and how can that happen if you are a small enitity and several people have your domain.... such would be the case with my domain name... uDomain.com. If new TLD's are opened someone could register for instance uDomain.reg, uDomain.internet....This would be no problem if I was doing business locally, as people would know me locally, but I am not local and the internet is not offline. I am a faceless busines in this sea of internet commerce, however because I am known as uDomain.com, there are people who can find me on the internet (again keeping the internet viable). They might not be able to find me if there are 10 variations. This would be the equivalent of creating a language and then saying there are 10 variations that you can learn. The confusion is what would lead to the demise of the internet as we know it.....