ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), will soon be outlining its plans for companies wishing to buy their own domain names, and the signs are companies are going to have to pay big money to prevent cybersquatters from hijacking ‘their’ domains.
Branded domain names allow companies to register their own name as the part of the website address that comes after the final full-stop (where you currently find.com,.co.uk, etc.). So instead of marketing-map.co.uk/marketing-news you would have news.marketing-map (not that we’re planning on spending the kind of money necessary to buy a branded domain).
The expected cost for registering a branded domain is about £115,000 ($185,000) with additional charges of £15,000 ($25,000) per year to cover subscription and infrastructure costs. The danger for companies is that if they don’t register their own branded domains someone else will and then try and charge the company to get the domain rights transferred.
A similar thing happened (and to some extend still happens) in the early days of web; with individual buying up potentially lucrative domain names to later sell on to businesses (though the practice could also end up with the individual ending up in court and having to give up the domain name, rather than making money from it).