“Traditional” trade marks are governed by a systems that have jurisdiction at the core - while the DNS is global.

Also, most trade mark systems use the concept of “class” to identify categories, so that trade marks are applied for a specific class of products. This allows, for instance, to make a distinction between Apple - the fruit, Apple - the recording company, Apple - the computer, and so on. The example that has been made from the beginning of these discussions in the Internet community is that if multiple companies apply for .apple, each of them belonging to a different class, the traditional way goes in tilt.