Artificial intelligence is one of the most talked-about and controversial topics these days, so it’s no surprise that it’s having an impact on domain names and domain name disputes.
Trademark owners might especially be interested in learning how artificial intelligence, or “AI,” as it is commonly known, is affecting the ever-growing problem of cybersquatting.
As of May 2023, the impact so far seems to be small but growing, so I think it’s something that trademark owners will want to monitor, because being proactive could help to prevent future problems.
In a new video, I discuss one specific issue: the registration and use of dot-ai domain names that contain or are confusingly similar to a trademark, by someone who is not the trademark owner and who does not have permission from the trademark owner to register the domain name.
Dot-ai, of course, is a top-level domain or TLD, but it is not a new TLD and its origins have nothing to do with artificial intelligence. Rather, dot-ai is the country-code or ccTLD for Anguilla, the British territory in the Caribbean, and it’s just one of more than 300 ccTLDs, each of which consists of only two letters, such as dot-us for the United States, dot-ca for Canada, dot-uk for the United Kingdom, and so forth. It just so happens that this particular ccTLD, dot-ai, now corresponds to one of the hottest technologies in the world.
In the video, I talk about:
Dot-ai domain name registrations are on the rise, doubling in just one recent month (coinciding with the opening of ChatGPT).
The Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) applies to dot-ai domain names.
The number of UDRP complaints involving dot-ai domain names is on track to significantly increase this year.
I also discuss how more artificial intelligence issues are affecting more “traditional” cybersquatting cases, such as a recent UDRP decision for the domain name <chatgptmorganstanley.com>.
Should trademark owners be worried?
As always, the great possibilities brought about by new a technology also seem to bring out the bad guys, and that’s starting to happen in the AI space, too. Fortunately, though, the UDRP seems well-positioned to help trademark owners successfully tackle these problems.
(P.S.: The image for this blog post was created by artificial intelligence, specifically Microsoft Bing’s image creator powered by DALL-E from OpenAI.)
