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What does your domain name mean to you?
Try this: think of it as the cue for your customers to
look you up. Make it easy to remember, and make it resemble
your company name and what you have to offer. If you
are looking for a "generic" domain name that
describes your product, such as gadget.com, you are probably
three to four years too late to register it. You may
also find yourcompany.com or an acronym of your company
name has already been taken. Don't despair. Think creatively.
Try YourcompanyGadget.com, GadgetOnline.com, Gadget2Go.com,
YourcompanyOnline.com, and other variations. People often
miss the hyphen in domain names, so you may wish to avoid
it unless you have invested in branding your name.
But why be contented with having only one domain name
for your business? Additional domains can point to your
home page or to specific pages in your Web site, so customers
can easily find you by your company name or products
you carry. Or you can use canonical domain names to name
different sections of your Web site, such as Gadget.YourCompany.com.
If your dream domain name has already been
taken, how about using Yourcompany.net or Yourcompany.org?
In the
early Internet days, most domain names ended with .org
indicating nonprofit organizations or .edu denoting educational
institutions. These days domain name registration companies
are more interested in selling than in following the
top level domain name convention. Should you use .org
or .net if the .com domain name has been taken? The rule
of thumb is: will your customers be confused?
Can you trademark your domain name? Yes,
a domain name is trademarkable if it offers goods and
services over
the Internet and is an identifier. How do you go
about trademarking your domain name? First do a trademark
search. Establish that your chosen name is available
to be trademarked and that it does not infringe or
dilute preexisting trademarks. Visit U.S. Patent
and
Trademark Offices, or hire an attorney. Mere registration
of a domain name does not give you a legal right
to use it. The courts have held that trademark usage
trumps
domain name registration. So when you register a
domain name, be sure to check that it does not contain
an
existing trademark or cause confusion with one. For
example, you are free to register camera.com, but
it is prudent not to choose KodakCamera2go.com.
What happens if one day you receive a letter
from a not-so-friendly attorney demanding that you cease
and
desist using your domain name which you thought was rightfully
yours? Or what if you find out some other business has
already registered a domain name that may resemble your
company name or trademark? Millions of dollars of damages
have been claimed after lengthy court battles over such
issues. You may want to use an alternative route to resolve
the differences - try one of the Dispute-Resolution Service
Providers approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned
Names and Numbers (ICANN), the official governing body,
located at www.icann.org.
Now come the nuts and bolts of domain name
registration and transfer. First look up the WHOIS database
to see
if your name is available. One place to look for it is
at www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois.
Network Solutions is the major domain name registrar,
which has recently registered the 10 millionth name,
though dozens of other registrars have now also been
accredited. With this competition came choices. You can
now register your domain name for any period of time
from one year to ten years, and may pay a lot less than
the $35 per year which had been the standard fee. A list
of registrars is available at www.icann.org/registrars/accredited-list.html.
An easy way to register is just to have your trusted
Web hosting company take care of it, usually for a very
nominal fee. This may also save you a lot of hassle when
the time comes to set up your domain name in the server
hosting your new Web site.
Who owns your domain name? While
your domain name may not be able to fetch $7.5 million
like business.com,
it may be worth a whole lot more than the $35 you paid,
or a lot less. A recent court ruling decided that a domain
name is not intellectual property, and ruled that the
registrar may take back your domain name. Such is the
case in Network Solutions' service agreement, which says
that the company may terminate domain name registration
services for "any improper purpose, as determined
in (their) sole discretion."
We have certainly not heard the last word on domain
name ownership yet. But no matter who officially owns
it, or what its monetary value is, your domain name is
the doorway through which your customers reach you. Choose
it well.
Copyright Eva Chiu and InfoAdvantage.
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