Tesco goes following domain hack tes.co – and there’s more to come.

Here’s an example of a type of complaint we’ll see more often going forward.

Traditionally, UDRP panels don’t consider the top level domain as part of what makes a domain name similar to a mark in which the complainant has rights.

We can expect this to change as fresh top level domain names come online.

Here’s an example of how a second level domain is not similar to a complainant’s mark, but the combination of the first and second level domain are: tes.co. “TES” is not similar to TESCO, but TES.CO is much more similar.

UK grocery and retailing giant Tesco has filed a complaint with World Intellectual Property Organization over this domain name.

The domain is owned by someone in the United Kingdom who forwards the domain to a site offering solar power equipment.

I think that the introduction of fresh TLDs will lead to quite a bit of debate regarding the inclusion of first and second levels of a domain for similarity. I also think that descriptive top level domains will become a factor. For example, amazon.green would not necessarily suggest a domain is targeting Amazon.com, but amazon.book might.