TRADEMARK-BASED challenges to domain name registrations worldwide and the resolutions that have been struck point to an ongoing redefinition in the Internet’s framework, particularly on the issue of property rights. It is a matter that courts are only beginning to comprehend and therefore have not been able to sufficiently address.

One cause of disputes is cybersquatting, wherein individuals have made a business out of registering domain names consisting of popular terms and trademarks to resell them to trademark holders for a considerable profit or to detour Web traffic to their sites. Often, trademark holders have secured the better end of domain name disputes against “cybersquatters,” both in court and in name registries. This has encouraged the practice of “reverse domain name hijacking,” that of taking back names from people who had made first and legitimate claims to domain names.

An interesting case, which might have served as inspiration to PLDT, is British Telecom. With already numerous domain names corresponding to its trademarks, the telco still sought bt.org, already registered by British name speculators. The court eventually ruled in favor of British Telecom, despite the generic character of the acronym “bt” and the fact that the top-level domain .org is generally used for registering noncommercial organizations.

By insisting on the exclusive use of the acronym “PLDT,” even to the point of restricting its use in the meta tags of html documents, the local dominant carrier wants a similar result out of its lawsuit against Kaimo and PLDTI. Never mind if there is another telco, PLD Telekom, based in Russia that uses the same acronym.

Legal analysts also observe that trademark holders have been exploiting the concept of trademark dilution, where the power of a famous trademark to identify the owner’s goods and services is weakened by the use of the same trademark by another. Faced with cease-and-desist letters from lawyers of famous trademark owners, not a few individuals and small businesses have caved in to pressure and gave up the domain name without any litigation.

It was not until a U.S. federal court ruled against the Avery Dennison label company in August that an individual has finally gotten the scales tipped in his favor. In this case, the court ordered the company—which already has avery.com—to return the domain of avery.net to a man who owns it and leases it to others bearing the last name Avery.

Another judicial breakthrough has come to the Davids out there who are battling the Goliaths in trademark holders. On the heels of the landmark avery.net decision, a Boston federal judge also ruled in favor of a tiny computer consultant company in a long-running domain dispute that pitted it against giant toy maker Hasbro, Inc. Judge Douglas Woodlock of the Massachusetts district court declared that Hasbro’s ownership of the famous trademark “Clue” for its board game did not automatically entitle it to take away Clue Computing’s Internet address clue.com.

For the likes of Kaimo and PLDTI, this is a welcome development. PLDT’s argument regarding trademark dilution closely resembles Hasbro’s, which asks the court to recognize as a form of dilution the use of another’s tradename as a domain name.

But the horizon may still not appear as auspicious. Consider Network Solutions’s actions in domain name disputes. On the one hand, NSI’s own dispute procedures stipulate that trademark ownership does not automatically extend to the right to register a domain name. On the other, argues Carl Oppedahl, an intellectual property lawyer, these have also given trademark holders “more sweeping rights than they have under trademark laws.”

In one instance, the toy company that holds the trademark for the Gumby and Pokey dolls almost got away with the domain name of a personal Web site registered to a 12-year-old boy named Pokey after it presented NSI its claims.

Of the parody cases studied by Mueller, there was a tendency to strengthen trademark protection at the expense of expression. The man who registered british-telecom.com in order to post criticism against the company got sued and eventually handed over the domain name.

To reduce court battles over domains, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a new organization tasked to take over the administrative functions of the Internet, has recently adopted a policy to establish a uniform international system for resolving such disputes. This entails requiring all companies that register addresses in the popular top-level domains to send tradename-related disputes to a mandatory arbitration process, whose costs shall be shouldered by the complainant.

But the implementation of this policy has been delayed by concerns over ICANN’s seeming bias for the rights of big companies and trademark holders over small enterprises and individuals. Participants in ICANN’s public meeting in August were already worried about the proposal being dominated by corporate and trademark interests, particularly as it pertains to what constitutes abuse and bad faith in the registration of Internet addresses. Some observers have even taken issue with what cybersquatting means according to the new ICANN policy, which says it is an “abusive” use of trademark. Observers say this definition is simply too broad and may further encourage big companies—whose names have already been taken—to engage in reverse domain hijacking.

While indeed cybersquatting has grown to be a major irritant that needs to be addressed, civil libertarians say that not enough protection is being given to small companies and individuals who may have a first and legitimate claim to domain names. A distinction therefore has to be made between them and overt profiteers.