Every country has different laws and regulations on trade marks therefore there is a territorial effect throughout various areas. It is possible for identical brand names to be owned in the UK and in the USA by completely different people. This creates problems sometimes with regards to a .com brand name.

A good example is prince.com. In this case the company Prince – a computer consultancy company in the UK were challenged by a sports company with the same name (the case was won be the computer company).

Another example is Marks and Spencer and One in a Million. One in a Million has purposely registered brand names including Marks and Spencer, Sainsburys, Virgin and Cellnet with the intent of selling to these companies. The High Court and Court of Appeal told One in a Million to relinquish these claims.

Normally domains with no trademark significance can be acquired by those who first registered however these Court Cases show that the relation between Domain Names and brand names can be very important.