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The Trademark Issues

Today, businesses desperately need global access and that demands global name protection umbrella. A typical globally
trade-marked name could easily cost 2K-5K USD per application, per country, and at times, after several years of paper-pushing, may only end up in as many as 100 of the 250 countries. Often, these candidates, get dropped during the process for repeated opposition and resistance from other similar names while still struggling to maintain a spot-light position in its market-place. The stories are embarrassingly painful. The global trade-marking procedures are unnecessarily slow and overly complicated. Of the hundreds of millions of names all over the world, only less than few thousand names are properly filed worldwide and protected. The costs plus a decade long struggle is prohibitive for most growing businesses. Some 5000-trademark law firms around the world are battling this out.

The new tool offers a clear saving of 95% of time and 95% of traditional advertising cost to create global cyber presence. Tens of thousands of businesses currently pushing weaker or similar brand identities will find this a great life-saver. The new re-branding era of the new global-scale mediums is around the corner, and this new plan offers a great platform.

ICANN is only one body issuing exclusive global name rights to one single unique identity, traditional global trade-marking deals with 250 countries and their bureaucracies. The new cyber-branding platform will create a more precise black and white name clearance issues, and eliminate too many grey zones to create prolonged legal battles.

The Internet Break-Up Issues

The center of Internet is neither Washington nor Beijing; it is now just an ocean in between. With 3 billion users by 2020, if accessed on intelligent platforms, it offers free customer reach, ever assembled in the history; it is a solid base for big players and a gold-mine for start-ups and SMEs. While the old domain suffix extension has served their limited value and out side .com, all other are presumed mostly ineffective, a brand new more powerful domain tool for the 2020 global pool is very essential. Countries all over the world want to play this game openly and creating unlimited suffixes provides that blanket.

On the other hand, China alone could easily split the current Internet in two and the rest of the other groups will follow. Based on language and usage hierarchy, it is Chinese, English, Hindustani, Russian, Spanish... and each language group easily justifies their own system while technology provides the support. Embracing global naming and language realities, ICANN further softens the issues and creates open harmony among nations. A break-up must be avoided at all costs.

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Naseem Javed, recognized as a world authority on corporate image and global name identities, is a harsh critic of casual and accidental naming. He is a dynamic speaker on corporate image and branding issues, and is also the author of Naming for Power. He founded ABC Namebank International, an image and branding consultancy over 25 years ago.
Website: www.abcnamebank.com
Article posted on February 8, 2009.