We have reached a point where companies are trying to buy “names” related with their own brand name in services which are widely used and adopted by huge number of users worldwide. We have seen what is happening every time a new A Class DNS is introduced. Is it really necessary to own all the possible names produced by the brand name e.g. (not a company’s brand but just an example) madona, madonna, madona, mantona, and how will a company going to make me not use a name exactly the same as its brand? Hey… I want to use the name patata but i t looks like it is related in some way with the word potato since it means the same thing in Greek. It seems that Lays has to “buy” that name in every language but heyyyy, maybe Humpty Dumpty can offer more money to “buy” that name. And later, no country would be able to use that word again.

Also, dns names don’t have a big company managing them. How about a big company offering a widely used service like facebook? Why would a company bother “buying” names again from a company which might be its competitor too? Imagine Twitter trying to block its name from being used as http;//www.facebook.com/twitter.

Another point too… do you remember the website which existed some months ago (i don’t know if it still exists), you just had to enter tfl.gov.com instead of tfl.gov.uk (or something similar) that was making fun of the services provided by London Transport. Well… it seems that London transport could find find some great proposals for improving their services in that site. Do you thing that they even bothered reading what was written there?

It seems that it is not only an IPR issue. but also one more issue that lawyers are involved trying to cover what the managers don’t want to fix.

(things are not that simple of course, but I hope that what I wrote can make someone think further than the “name issue”).