On November 16, 2009, ICANN (the international organization) started to test the ability to have Internet domain names be in alphabets outside of Roman characters.
What does this mean from a trademark perspective?
It means a lot more websites to protect from trademark infringement and trademark dilution.
Here is an example. Your company has a website. Your company probably has several different forms of the website (for example, http://coca-cola.com and http://coke.com lead to the same place). If your business does not own multiple domain names that are variations on its trademark, it should.
What happens if Chinese characters sound similar to your business’ trademark? Will your company want to buy all those domain names? Will the company want to police all those domain names for cybersquatting issues? It is a difficult balance to strike because monitoring the trademark and enforcing the trademark (via a federal infringement suit or a domain name proceeding in WIPO via the UDRP), but a lack of enforcement will harm your trademark and its value.
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