So what happens if ...
Booking.com forget to pay the fee for the domain? No, not that farfetched - even Microsoft forgot, and more than once. So, if the domain is a trademark, will the registrar (or a "drop registrar" as the case may be) be able to release the domain and transfer it to someone else, or will the trademark holder say, "Hey, no one but us can use it!"
Basically, a domain is a rather valuable property. Effectively, Booking Holdings (that's the company, not "Booking.com") pay the managing entity (the registrar) a fee for the right to use the domain name. Stop paying and you lose this right. A part of that "rent" goes to VeriSign who operate the .com TLD (among others). There is also ICANN. There are auctions, "high frequency trading" (by drop registrars) and other processes that are managed within this rather non-trivial infrastructure. Does the court's decision throw a big spanner into the wheels of this machine? The mechanism for registering a trademark has been completely independent from domain name management until now. How will it all be reconciled?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
