property laws and jurisprudence (precedents) for deciding similar cases. If one party is using a name it should not be using according to another party, they can solve it between themselves, in the courts if necessary. This *works*.
Well, not exactly and this is especially problematic for iTLDs. Trademark law is fundamentally national. Therefore there is a question of *which* country's courts have jurisdiction over domain name conflicts. For some background, see www.itu.int/intreg/dns.html (see the section on domain names & trademarks)
Of course it is made complicated by the fact that the Internet transcedes locality: which law is applicable, what is the scope of a domain name. In this respect the sysem of country toplevel domains has advantages!
true - it does provide some relief since jurisdiction is arguably more clear-cut.
Technically speaking this is all he consequence of the lack of a real directory service on the Internet. If we had that the focus would shift to that rather than the names which are not intended to be overloaded with so much meaning as they currently are. Now we do not have that (although WEB search engines are quite a ways in that direction).
For a nice analysis that echos this see http://ksgwww.harvard.edu/iip/bradner.html Bob