ICANN, the global authority dealing with domain names, is speeding up the threat of monopolization on the internet via its new gTLD program. According to a report published in The Hindu, the L’Oreal Group, the world’s largest cosmetics and beauty products maker, has applied for .beauty domain extension. If L’Oreal is successful laying its hands on .beauty, the French company will be able to reserve this extension just for its own personal use. Unlike .COM and other popular TLDs, which are available for general public, .beauty will become a private property of the L’Oreal Group.
What happens after this is that, any beauty salon owner who wishes to register .beauty domain name will not be able to register it, as was the case in registering common gTLDs like .COM. L’Oreal will have the exclusive right for using .beauty.
If L’Oreal seeks to register “beauty” as its trademark, the company will not be able to do so, primarily because the word beauty is very generic and no single party can be given the exclusive right for its use. Therefore it is a little surprising that L’Oreal should get the global rights for .beauty, just because the company is willing to pay $1, 85,000 application fees to ICANN.
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