Of course I'm not talking about the DNS implementation!

But you're right, I could be more concise with my words, in the interest of making this a more inclusive forum.

First things first:

>I don't get what DNS has to do with any of this

DNS means Domain Name System. Domain names are resolved to IP numbers (think of that like the unique phone number of a particular computer in the internet) using DNS. Registrars manage what entries go in/out of this DNS. Registrars are a player in this whole technical/social system we agreed to follow called DNS.

With regards to intellectual property and domain names, consider all of these scenarios:

A. Someone owns trademark.com, somebody else owns "The Trademark" in the US. Is there copyright infringement?

B. Someone owns trademark.com, somebody else owns "The Trademark" in Vanuatu. Is there copyright infringement?

C. Someone owns trademark.de, somebody else owns "The Trademark" in the US. The site is overwhelmingly accessed by people who reside in the US. The site provides a service identical to the one provided by "The Trademark" in the US. Is there copyright infringement?

D. Someone owns trademark.de, somebody else owns "The Trademark" in the US. The site is overwhelmingly accessed by people who reside in Germany. The site provides a service identical to the one provided by "The Trademark" in the US. Is there copyright infringement?

E. Someone owns trademark.de, somebody else owns "The Trademark" in Germany. The site provides a service identical to the one provided by "The Trademark" in the Germany. Is there copyright infringement?

F. Someone owns trademark.de, somebody else owns "The Trademark" in Germany. The site provides a service completely different to the one provided by "The Trademark" in the Germany. Is there copyright infringement?

Can you see now, how domain names and trademarks are naturally decoupled?

Edit: Sorry! On a 2nd read I caught myself making the same mistake again. By "naturally decoupled" I mean that effects (set of rules, jurisdiction, law, etc...) that apply to the first entity (domain names) do not necessarily apply to the other one (trademarks).