The Singular, the Plural, and the 'Average, Reasonable Internet User'- Who Are They, and Can They Coexist?

摘要

When the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) began accepting applications for new generic top-level domains (gTLDs), applications for the singular and the plural of common English language words were not assigned to contention sets as being confusingly similar. Nor did ICANN's String Similarity Assessment Tool employed by the String Similarity Panel find the singular and plural to be so similar as to require such assignment. Even when the Government Advisory Council (GAC), an ICANN interest group consisting of representatives from various national governments, recommended that ICANN should adopt procedures that prevented both the singular and the plural forms from co-existing as separate new gTLDs, the ICANN Board New gTLD Program Committee (NGPC) stated that it saw no need to make any changes to the current new gTLD Applicant Guidebook (the Guidebook) in order "to address potential consumer confusion specifically resulting from allowing singular and plural versions of the same strings."