These traditional legal fields include contracts, copyright, trademark, trade secret, patent, telecommunications and privacy among others. Those practitioners familiar with Internet legal issues understand that they are only an extension of the legal disciplines already familiar to most attorneys. However, as traffic, complexity and government regulation all increase, it is likely that a set of legal methods will develop to solve the problems unique to the Internet. The result will be that the traditional legal system adapts existing law in order to create the new field of Internet Law. And, it seems certain that those practitioners most familiar with the Internet will be the ones instrumental in creating and defining this new legal discipline.
Domain names are a function of the design of the Internet.
The result is that domain name registrations reserve and identify particular Internet locations with unique alphanumeric names. Not only is human confusion reduced, but the interconnected servers and computers are able to identify each uniquely named location without conflict. On the other hand, trademark registrations are not concerned with unique Internet locations and the smooth electronic communication that results. Instead, they serve to protect names that are used to identify the source of goods or services used in commerce. The two naming functions are distinct.