In a special meeting in Singapore on June 20th, the ICANN Board of Directors voted to adopt a new generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) program, concluding six years of development.

This program is expected to introduce hundreds of new domains, such as .shop, .green, .[brand], etc., to the existing 22 top level domains (e.g., .com, .net., .info, .biz) by next year, fundamentally changing the internet and the landscape for trademark owners.

There will be various types of new top level domains, such as keyword domains (.green, .shop, .toys, .hotel), place domains (.nyc, .berlin), as well as brand domains (.apple, .ibm, .canon).

Although some details of the program are still subject to change, the program is sufficiently outlined to enable trademark owners to formulate their brand protection strategies in this new domain landscape.