Internet domain names and trademarks: a comparative study of US, German and South  Aftican law

Schenk, Oliver

Internet domain names and trademarks: a comparative study of US, German and South Aftican law

Thesis / Dissertation

1999

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

Centre for Law and Society

Faculty

Faculty of Law

Abstract

The incredible surge in popularity of the Internet and, in particular, the World Wide Web, has been engendered by the Web's ability to offer virtually instant ac-cess to a universe of information. As communication on the Web reaches an ever-greater population, a golden commercial opportunity has arisen. The Web, from a commercial point of view, is very much a combination of a shop window and an advertising campaign. Branding and, therefore, trademarks are consequently a vital aspect of trading on the Internet. A domain name is a company's address on the Internet, and for the sake of convenience and marketing reasons, the most favoured addresses are those containing the trademark or tradename of the company itself About five million domain names are registered presently, with 70.000 new ones being added each week. ¹ However, unlike most advertising campaigns, an advertisement placed on the Internet will by default be a global campaign. This makes the legal position troublesome in some ways, for trademarks are national by nature. Moreover, unlike trademarks, the same domain name can only be assigned once.