Pursuant to Paragraph 3.2.1 of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers' (ICANN) new gTLD Applicant Guidebook, a formal objection to an application for a new generic top-level domain (gTLD) may be filed on any one of four grounds, one of which is the Legal Rights Objection. The basis for a Legal Rights Objection is that “the applied-for gTLD string infringes the existing legal rights of the objector.”

The World Intellectual Property Organization recently released the first three decisions relating to Legal Rights Objection (LRO). Each of the matters involved different situations, but the outcome was the same, with all three decisions denying the objectors' complaints.

In the first objection over an application for .VIP, the objector, I-REGISTRY Ltd, operates websites at www.i-registry.com and www.vip-registry.com. The latter site is devoted to the .vip gTLD in anticipation of I-REGISTRY succeeding with its application. The objector's parent company holds a Community Trade Mark (CTM) registration for VIP as a word and had granted to I-REGISTRY an exclusive license to use the trademark.