• New York Times, Thursday, June 18, 2009 12:15 PM

For brands -- along with celebrities and everyone else -- staking out and protecting their names and trademarks online has become a seemingly never-ending battle, The Times reports. With the rise of social networks, registering a simple Web address like pepsi.com or mileycyrus .com is apparently no longer enough to plant one's flag firmly in the virtual terra firma.

When domain names first became hot properties in the '90s, it was mostly companies that worried about claiming the right addresses. But in this more narcissistic Internet era, people who were once happily anonymous view themselves as online mini-celebrities with their own brands to promote.

Companies are feeling serious anxiety over this "online name game." RCN, a cable and telephone service based in Herndon, Va., submitted a request last week to Facebook to secure facebook.com/rcn in light of the social network's new customized Web address service. But, the Times reports, then Facebook said companies would need to have more than 1,000 fans on their pages to be eligible for the program.

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