NFIB

New Web Domains Bring Opportunity, Confusion
04/ 15/ 2002

by Michael Grebb

In 1999, the http://www.business.com domain name sold for $7.5 million. Those heady days may be over, but the importance of a Web address for businesses is as pressing today as ever.

Large corporations have become savvy about registering names early (usually before new product lines are publicly released) and considering every variation and misspelling, not to mention snagging all of the available domain suffixes such as .com, .net., and .org.

But for more frugal and time-strapped small businesses, such diligence often isn't an option. Take heart: There's a light at the end of that cybertunnel. Just this fall, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) began taking registrations for three new suffixes--.info, .biz, and .name. Two of those--.info and .biz--are available to businesses.

But like anything, registering new domain names remains more of an art than a science. Small businesses lacking the big legal and financial guns of major corporations must be especially careful. Here are some tips to help you navigate the new domain name terrain:

Hang Up Don't take calls (or e-mails) from telemarketers who want to sell you registrations or pre-registrations. They may even claim affiliation with a legitimate operation. Even if it's not an overt scam, there's no reason to pay someone else to handle a process that you can easily do yourself. Check with http://www.icann.org for more information on how to register domain names. And if you want to pay others to do it, shop around and call them--not vice versa.

Establish A Record--Early If you haven't trademarked your business name, do it now. You may also want to establish a "common law trademark" through a service like TM-it, online at http://www.tm-it.com, to prove that you were using the name first. This may offer protection until the official trademark comes through. To wrestle your domain name back from someone else can involve legal fees or possibly paying the original owner to release the name. Anything you can do to establish you were the original user of the name can bolster a legal case or be used as negotiation leverage.

Don't Procrastinate If you want to register your business name to new suffixes, act quickly. Pre-registration periods for the .info and .biz suffixes ended in September, but there's still time to register your name before the economy turns around and people start snapping up every word in the English language. Already, ICANN has taken some businesses to task for trying to pre-register .info names for which they didn't have trademarks. Don't be left behind because you thought you had all the time in the world. You don't.

Of course, you may not need to register a new URL. Your existing .com or .net address may be adequate. But if you're eyeing a new domain name or missed out on getting a good .com or .net name last time around, you can register new .info and .biz names at www.nic.info and www.nic.biz, respectively. And you can learn more about everything involved in the process at www.internic.net. Get educated now. Later, you'll be very glad you did.

Grebb is a Washington, D.C.-based writer focusing on technology and Internet issues.

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This article originally appeared in the January/February 2001 issue of MyBusiness Magazine, NFIB's member magazine.

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