What will these dictionary words achieve as global gatekeepers of cyber name identities, what power will they exert on new and established brands and who will be the new winners or losers in these global races? Which dictionary words will win gold, silver or bronze medal as top-level domain names and why? Each one of the 542 proposed dictionary word top-level domains will be analysed and categorised...check the list of 542 names www.azna.com
When a professional name evaluation based on the rules of naming and laws of corporate nomenclature are applied to each of the 524 dictionary words submitted as top-level domains a blurry picture appears. It shows lots of winners but also many troublesome name choices. As the discussions about naming issues and conflicts are being heated by the day, now misinformation and unrealistic debates are surfacing causing confusion in the domain name industry, global business community and consumers at large.
Why is this so important for all the business sectors all over the world? Every major name brand must be professionally re-evaluated to survive the new name jungle.
Despite all the technical brilliance and legal archery, at the end of the day, a gTLD is just a 'name'. It makes no difference where the dot is placed it's still a name and subjected to rules of corporate nomenclature and trademark laws. A name by name evaluation of the 542 generic names will clarify the market confusion over the naming issues.
Because, of all the related professional business services the advertising and branding agencies of world were best suited to take the lead and bridge the information gap on global gTLD programs. Their early and blunt refusal to entertain any of the gTLD issues or to engage in any serious fashion on global naming complexities only added confusion in the market place. Despite all that they are still best poised to lead the charge provided they get fully and openly engaged and attempt to become global experts on advanced level of corporate nomenclature alongside their traditional creative services.
By their mandate, trademark lawyers play a critical role in name conflicts, apply wisdom and clauses to defend and protect trademarks. However, such conflicts are post name selection issues; their mandate does not allow them to provide much earlier needed opinions on naming to their clients. As a result, the legal profession basically focuses on black and white issues and not the soft power nomenclature areas.
Here as a very small example; if 'apple' is in conflict with 'abble' they will apply the rules but are not mandated to create 'pineapple' 'banana' or 'apple juice' as alternate marketing solution. Such strategies are the realms of corporate nomenclature discipline. Now that the global naming complexities are so much on the forefront, it is becoming increasingly important for lawyers to become well-informed global naming experts. Where, when and how names are created and what really happens to 'name suitability' if wrongly thrown in the complex naming jungle to earn brand name equity.
Despite all the trademark protection and legal input, the entire proposed gTLD name applications, across the board, shows lack of name selection skills; on one side, large numbers of weaker or dysfunctional names have been proposed and on the other real good winners were completely ignored.
Improperly conceived random gTLDs, will only create massive high volume defensive-registrations, and traffic jams at trademark clearing house. The future of global domain expansion and new gTLDs is far brighter and skilful naming management must be at the core of this progression. Organisations all over the world have two new challenges; firstly how to transform current names in use into new age names to be able to easily perform on all platforms from print to cyber space with full protection and secondly how to quickly become naming expert to tackle the global naming complexities and domain name expansion.
