CHENNAI: It's been touted as the biggest internet shake-up since '.com' made its entry in 1984. But the freeing up of domain names may open the floodgates to cybersquatting and online fraud on an unprecedented scale.

This May, iPhone-maker Apple bought back the iCloud.com domain for about $4.5 million (over Rs 20 crore) before the much-publicized unveiling of the service. In the same month, rival Amazon bought domain names A.Co, Z.Co, K.Co, and Cloud.Co from a Colombia-based domain registry firm .Co for an undisclosed amount. Now imagine if corporate houses have to contend with infinite variations of their names and trademarks on the Internet as well.

Experts say issues of patent and trademark are likely to make a comeback with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) – the body governing Internet domain names – allowing all kinds of net suffixes alongside the popular ones like .com and .net. ICANN has even allowed companies and community groups to create their own names after the dot. Mid-level cos may be unable to protect domain names.