Yahoo recently filed application to register Y.com as a TradeMark at United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO.gov) but whether Yahoo will be ever allowed to use single-letter domain is doubtful because in 1993, Mr Jon Postel registered all the single letter Domain names he could with IANA.

The purpose of registering single letter Domains was to mainatin the proper functioning of Domain Name System. Domain Names that could not be registered by Mr Postel due to its unavailability were:

• Q.com (Qwest Communications),
• X.com (Paypal) and
• Z.com (Nissan).

And now it's up to ICANN, whether it will put up for sale, the remaining single letter Domain names or not. But still Yahoo.com has applied for Y.com registration based on their exisiting Trademark Y! It seems Yahoo wants to make sure, in case single letter Domain Names are released, they will be able to stake their claim over Y.com through the Trademark and they won't have to pay exorbitant sum for Y.com, that used to happen in the past.

Really, the trend till 1999-2000 was that of registering of Domain Names, that included famous Brand or Celebrity name was very popular and the registering person made billions out of Domain Names. But these are now things of the past. Since then laws have become very strict and law of various countries provide against CyberSquatting and also TradeMark protection has been extended to Domain Names. (Read more on "Cyber-Squatting" next week in another article)