“Domains have and will continue to go up in value faster than any other commodity ever known to man”, Bill gates.
Domain names have evolved into corporate identities and brand assets. Trademark and domain names seem similar, this article focuses on clarifying the differences.
Trademarks
Trademark is an intellectual property rights that protects business names, logos, and combinations of them. It’s always filed under certain classes of goods and services. It has a ten-year validity period and is renewable.
Trademark helps identify goods or services from a specific company. Trademarks are protected by law. You can sue other who use your trademark without permission.
Some famous trademark examples are:
- Name: Coco Chanel is one of the famous trademark names.
- Symbol: The McDonald golden arc is a famous trademark symbol.
Domain name
A domain name is the website’s address on the internet, and internet users use it for website access. Once registered, a domain cannot others cannot use it until it expires.
Some examples of domain names:
A domain name has three parts:
- Primary domain: “Amazon” in “www.amazon.com” is the primary domain
- Sub-level domain: “www” in “www.amazon.com” is the sub-level domain
- Top-level domain (TLD): “.com” in “www.amazon.com” is the top-level domain
Need for Domain Names
An IP address is an address that identifies your computer on the internet. Almost everything connected to the internet has an IP address, whether a server, router, computer or website.
When we search for a particular website, we get the result of the specific IP address associated with that website. Domain names are masks on top of IP Address that people can understand. One can also say that every domain name is associated with a particular IP address.
In the early days of the internet, people used IP addresses to visit websites. With the internet boom, people began creating many websites, and it became difficult to remember the IP addresses for each website. For simplifying the process to access a website, domain names came to the action. Domain names are a combination of alphanumeric characters, which is easy to remember.
Difference between domain name and trademark
| Domain Name | Trademarks |
| Domain name registration is available for only alphanumeric text. | Trademark registration is available for both text and images. |
| There is no need to register for particular goods or services | It must be registered under some class that represents certain goods or services. |
| It is also valid for a time agreed upon by the registrant and the registrar. | It is valid for ten years and can be renewable after every ten years. |
| Two companies or a person cannot use the same domain name. | The same trademark can be granted to others if registered under different classes of goods and services. |
| Domain names operate on a global level. | Trademark right applies to the countries where it is applied. |
| It helps us in remembering the web address. | It can help distinguish the origin of a product or service from others. |
| Increase access value of the business from any remote place. | Support face value of a business or profession. |
| A domain name can be used to describe the features of the goods or services being sought, such as “freshbread.com” for a bakery. | A trademark that consists solely of a sign that describes the features of the sought-after goods or services will not be registrable. Signs like “fresh bread” for bakery services would be considered descriptive and nondistinctive, and hence would not be registrable (although “fresh bread” for apparel would be fine). |
In conclusion, internet is highly favoured medium for the rapid flow of all forms of business-related information. Adequate protection of unique domain names is critical. Under the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) and the WIPO (World Intellectual PropertyOrganization), domain names protection is possible.
Interesting facts
- ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), is responsible for registering and protecting domain names as trademarks or service marks at the global level.
- Domain name can be registrated and protected as trademark or service marks both at National or International levels.
- Domain name can be trademarked but it has to be registrated under trademark class.
- Same domain can be registrated for a different users. It is possible with the help of top-level domains. Yet, the use of an already registered domain name by another person is not possible. For example, no users can get the “www.xyz.com” domain registered for their websites if it is already registered. But if someone goes with the “www.xyz.in” domain name, he can get this domain name registered. It means that one can get a domain name registration of an already registered domain name by changing its top-level domain.