Discussions within ICANN are underway about what to do with the .SU top level domain. The .SU TLD was a country code when the Soviet Union existed. Obviously, that political entity no longer exists. There is now a debate about whether to close down the TLD or not. In the meantime, the people who run it (in some place called “Russia,” which already has its own TLD, .ru) are registering new domains like mad. ICANN is in a conundrum.
Having just read ICANN's new TLD policy, and aware of its deep solicitude for trademark rights in the domain name space, we at IGP propose a simple solution. TLD strings, everyone agrees, must not violate pre-existing trademark rights. It's obvious to our trademark lawyers here that SU stands for Syracuse University. We have already punished encroaching malefactors such as Susquehanna University who think they might make some use of those initials. Our lawyers are, in fact, like other trademark lawyers in that they are willing to risk a nuclear war and any other collateral damage in order to maintain these rights. So we can do this the easy way or the hard way. ICANN redelegates .su to us, now. Or else.
