Big-name companies are refusing to shell out for new Icann domain names, despite the threat of cybersquatters, while smaller firms weigh up the advantages.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) has made available seven new top-level domains, such as .biz. But this week leading firms were in no rush to secure names.

WHSmith Online, for example, confirmed that it has no plans to register its brand in .biz or any of the other new domains. "It's a licence for the gullible to pay for something that's not really valuable," said Rick Latham, managing director of WHSmith Online.

"I only ever buy a domain if we have an absolute use for it, and if someone tries to steal our brand we will get them," he said.

"Normally, people are just chancing their arm and, if you give them a fairly stiff warning, you may have to pay their costs up to that point - which may just be the registration fees."

Hewlett Packard (HP) took a similar stance, arguing that it is more cost-effective to tackle instances of so-called cybersquatting on a case-by-case basis.

"Any action that we've taken has been reactive," said Pippa Wheeler, European trademark attorney for HP's legal department. "Firefighting has been cheaper than being proactive. Any action looks picky. The end doesn't justify the means."

HP is considering whether to register .biz, but this will link visitors back to the hp.com site

"It's a business decision within particular branding constraint," said Wheeler. "Branding should always go back to hp.com. We only use the individual country domain names where there has been a local advantage."

This contradicts the view of many industry analysts, including Gartner, which argues that corporate enterprises should expect to pay $70,000 upfront to protect their brand across all domains, with a maintenance figure of about $20,000 a year, if they want to protect themselves.

Actual cybersquatting disputes are rare, according to Nominet UK, the national registry for .co.uk and .org.uk. It says there were about 2.5 million .uk registrations this year and fewer than 0.1 per cent of these have been disputed.

"Most are not widely known trademarks. It's Jones the Plumber and Jones the Baker, or Jones & Jones where one partner falls out with the other," said Willie Black, managing director of Nominet UK.

Small and medium-sized businesses are expected to take advantage of the new .biz domain, as it is increasingly difficult to find a .co.uk domain that isn't registered.

First published in Computing