Silly TLD competition: the best entries

The IPKat's competition to create some top level domains of a rather unusual nature attracted some clever entries -- alas, not of them being publishable on a family blog such as this one). He thanks all entrants for taking the trouble to enter and for the fun he had in reading their entries.

From the fertile mind of Graeme Fearon (Head of Intellectual Property Thring Townsend Lee & Pembertons) came the following suggestions:

.dash for morse code enthusiasts

.dotdot for cliffhanging websites ( recurrent theme: see also Craig Smith's entries, below)

.www for palindromic domain names

.tld for websites about TLDs

.innit for websites aimed at teenagers so the rest of us can easily filter them out

.antidisestablishmentarianism for websites opposed to the removal of the Church of England's status as the state church of England

.wwf to provide enough spare domain names for all parties in trade mark disputes

.etc for miscellaneous websites

.qom for websites devoted to the holy city of Shia Islam in Iran

.kom for websites devoted to ethnic peoples of northwest Cameroon

Modestly confining himself to just a single entry, David Brophy (Partner F. R. Kelly & Co., Dublin) proposed .squat, adding:

"This domain would be essentially designed for cybersquatters. Registration of a .squat domain would be open to any natural or legal person, other than those who might have a genuine commercial interest in the word being registered. So, for example, a registration of (say) http://www.ipkat.squat/ could be opposed only on the grounds that the registrant had a bona fide business or commercial interest in the IPKAT name, or that the registrant had registered IPKAT as a trade mark. In cases of dispute, parties could submit evidence of how they intended to use the domain to bamboozle and hoodwink the public, and the more outrageous their plans, the better their prospects of success. Administration of the domain and dispute resolution would be conducted by a new organisation, preferably called something like IKANN or VeriSine (no relation to ICANN or VeriSign, of course)".

Fellow countryman, academic and member of the Irish and New York Bars TJ McIntyre, also proposes .squat, which -- with the sensitivity of an Irish ear to the cadence of the spoken word -- he describes as

"a rhyming TLD to be reserved for those who can show absolutely no rights or
legitimate interests in a particular name. Trade mark holders need not apply".

Kristof Neefs (Laga, Belgium) asks,

"Wouldn't the IP community be thrilled if a .bud TLD were to be launched?"

He adds that ICANN will soon launch the new gTLD program (see here for details), which could make .google a real possibility.

From the Antipodes come the sage proposals of Craig Smith (Freehills):

".sux: the UDRP decisions indicate that this domain should prove popular. Working out the rules for a sunrise period may prove tricky though since some companies will have more than one critic wanting to use the relevant domain name ‘in good faith’.

.comm: this domain will clearly signal to consumers that it is short for ‘commerce’ and so will provide a useful domain for companies wanting to communicate in good faith that their domain name is in the commercial sphere. It should be a popular domain and it is hard to think of any serious adverse implications if it were made available.

.dotdot -- for companies who want to emphasise their message that, wait,
there’s more …"

Finally, and this is more by way of comment than as an entry, an un-nameable servant of the public sends us this logo (right), for which trade mark protection has been sought in the United Kingdom. The "cx.xk" apparently represents "co.uk", but it's easy to get the wrong idea.

The winner? The IPKat is opting for .sux, so well done Craig! Merpel says, didn't he win the "How many IP lawyers does it take to change a lightbulb" competition two years ago?