A survey is now being conducted by World Trademark Review (WTR), seeking input from marketing and trademark professionals as to their views on how industry is preparing for the impact of the new generic top level domains (gTLD) that ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) appears to be pushing forward with.    The survey is supported by a number of domain name and brand protection service providers, trademark owner associations and professional marketing associations.

As previously reported on this blog, ICANN proposes to expand beyond the current gTLDs, of which there are 21, including .com, .org and .net.  Under the proposed expansion, any company will be permitted to set up its own domain registry under any term –  for example .cars, .honda, .mapleleafs, .canucks and pretty much anything else will be possible.  This development obviously has huge implications for all brand owners.

WTR’s survey is intended to provide a sense of how well prepared brand owners are for this coming change.