Abstract: The New gTLD Program purports to increase the amount of domain names available on the Internet. This Article suggests that The Program will not meet its stated goals. The Article demonstrates this shortcoming by analyzing the jurisprudence from the Legal Rights Objection and forecasting how other courts and panels will absorb these principles, and adjudicate gTLD disputes in the near future.Ultimately, the standard of review protects not only a mark as it exists, but also proximate variations of the mark that radiate from the original mark and satisfy the standard of customer confusion. Thus, major marks that already dominate the field do not lose their grip, but rather swallow up and absorb these proximate marks under this standard of confusion. This absorption of proximate marks into existing marks saps the language’s ontology of its semantic wealth, and thus will not expand the availability of marks in URL space.To download this article by Jack Vidovich from the American University Washington College of Law in full [pdf], go to:
digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1095&context=ipbrief&sei-redir=1