International Center for Dispute Resolution (ICDR) which is the international branch of the American Arbitration Association (AAA) delivered a controversial judgement concerning Commercial Connect LLC’s complaint. Commercial Connect LLC is an applicant for a new top-level domain .shop and it submitted a complaint for Donuts’ application for .shopping domain.
According to Commercial Connect LLC representatives judgement, delegation of both domains is impossible because of string similarity and can disorient a great number of Internet users. All in all the arguments can be considered quite logical as well as the decision of jury’s chairman Robert Nau who supported the complaint and stated .shopping domain delegation inadmissible.
However it is so perplexed in some other cases when speaking about string similarity for International Center for Dispute Resolution delivered quite opposite judgements long ago. In particular, it was recognized that existence of two similar domains .hotel and .hotels was quite normal and not disorienting. The experts note that such practice marks serious problems of the arbitrary structures: it looks like the decision on domain problems depends more on the personality of the chairman of the jury and his preferences than on the legal acts and regulating documents.
