The Internet domain registration system has spawned a race to aquire commercially valuable names and thwart competitors from using their own names. These trademarks, when legally registered with the US government through the Patent and Trademark Office, are considered the sole property of the corporation. As Radcliffe points out the right to trademarks will most likely be applicable to the Internet.
Problems arise, however, when registered trademarks are used as domain names for Web sites.
The fact that you have incorporated under a name or even that you have filed a trademark application does not automatically permit you to use that name on the Internet. This has provoked ambitious corporations to use the names of their competitors as Net-addresses. The issue raises questions about the nature of on-line identification. Some insist that trademark law carries over to the Net, while other believe that an address on the Web is simply a locating device. Because spatial or locational notions disappear on the Web, all that is left is the word.