New Web domains will cost businesses

WASHINGTON, April 7 (UPI) -- Businesses say they are worried they will have to spend millions to guard their brands with the coming of many new World Wide Web address suffixes.

A new stream of Web domain names ending in everything from ".a" to ".z" will join the familiar ".com" and ".org" beginning next year under a plan approved by Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers -- and that has businesses worried that a gold mine will open for scammers, USA Today reported Tuesday.

"It costs companies hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, to enforce their trademark rights in the existing space, so imagine how expensive it will be when Verizon gets infringed in a thousand new domains," Sarah Deutsch, vice president and associate general counsel for Verizon, told the newspaper. "Many businesses feel this is a form of extortion."

In what seems to be the most likely scenario, businesses with famous brands will move to register new Web site addresses pairing the brand names with any new extensions, such as "campbells.soup" or "gillette.razor," USA Today said.

But the not-for-profit Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse estimates could cost U.S. companies $1.5 billion in marketing costs.