Intellectual propertyBy Stuart Lockyear, Davenport Lyons, London

Registering multilingual domain namesTrade mark owners and their advisers are already well aware of the challenge to protection and enforcement of their rights presented by the proliferation of domain names.

The challenge is likely to become even greater with the introduction of multilingual domain names (MLDs).The current domain name system only recognises and supports the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) characters consisting of the roman alphabet, numerals zero to nine and hyphens, collectively known as ASCII script.Of course, a large proportion of the world's population uses non-roman scripts, such as Japanese, Chinese and Arabic.

To redress this imbalance several technology companies are developing competing methods of translating non-ASCII scripts into a readable form for the Internet to allow use of foreign language domain names.The project is supported by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the US-based not-for-profit entity which administers the domain name system, and by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

This international community of network designers, operators, vendors, and researchers concerned with the evolution of Internet architecture is responsible for establishing a standard technology for the Internet.The problem is that there are several technologies in the test-bed stage but no way of knowing which one is going to triumph as a standard, or when any of them might achieve functionality.

In the meantime, various registries are offering 'pre-registration' or domain name reservation services for MLDs that may give some sort of priority or legacy right to those who have chosen the 'right' system, and there is already some evidence of cybersquatting.It is unclear which system will prevail: one which has the first part of the address in foreign script, followed by a .com, .org or .net suffix, as proposed by US company Verisign (formerly Network Solutions Inc); or name and suffix entirely in foreign script, as proposed by some non-US organisations.

The latter seems more appealing to foreign language users, but would only be accessible to users whose Internet service providers supported the particular foreign suffix.Another problem is the choice of translation to use.

Languages and sub-dialects frequently rely on context to resolve ambiguity where single words or characters can have various meanings.

This makes setting a standard difficult and will require brand owners to be sensitive to cultural issues when translating English brand names into foreign script.This raises another issue.

When choosing an MLD to extend protection of an English language brand, should one translate the meaning or transliterate the sound? Because of the uncertainties with the system, about 20 registrations would be needed to cover all the representations of one brand name or trade mark under all systems being tested.Although the unit cost of registering MLDs is not greater than for current ASCII domains, it is clearly not practical.

A sensible registration strategy is required.Domain names are generally registered for two reasons - for actual use and for protection of a brand.

The same reasoning should be applied to MLDs.

Consider whether a non-roman version of a brand exists in a particular territory, either by use or because the brand has acquired a local 'nickname'.

If not, the threat of infringement may be too small to justify registering it as an MLD.

If there is a multilingual version of the brand then, as with the roman script version, the brand owner should seek to register domain names identical to those used by customers to identify the brand owner and its products and those which reflect most obvious mis-spellings.

As a rule of thumb, if a customer is unlikely to guess a domain name to be the location of a brand owner's site there is probably not enough risk of traffic being diverted to justify a domain name registration.Should lawyers advise clients to register MLDs? The problems are:l There is no overall standard system to register MLDs;l Technical issues have not fully been addressed and the system may never support e-mail;l Translation from roman languages is fraught with danger.The best advice that can be given to a brand or trade mark owner at this stage is to protect the versions of a brand that are actually used in a particular region or which target a particular market.If a company is only operating in, or serving the UK or Europe, there is probably no need to register a brand name in Chinese.

Rights holders should, as a priority, get their trade mark houses in order in all foreign territories in which they operate.

Ownership of a domain name prevents piracy.

Trade Mark registration protects against infinite infringing variations.