Organizations fight over use of term outside the U.S.

The National Association of Realtors is suing its longtime partner Move, Inc.—the company that runs Realtor.com—because of a dispute between the two about using the newly created top-level domain ".realtor" for Web addresses outside the U.S.

A top-level domain is the suffix included at the end of Web addresses. The best-known TLDs are ".com" and ".org." NAR recently acquired the rights to assign and use the TLD ".realtor" from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the nonprofit body that administers Web addresses.

NAR has a trademark on the term "realtor," but Move licenses the use of the name for Realtor.com, a property listing website using data provided by the association. Now that NAR owns .realtor, it wants to license the use of the TLD to two companies for websites that contain property listings outside the U.S.

However, Move contends NAR's actions would violate standing agreements to use "realtor" for online property listings. The association says that simply isn't true, so has sued Move in the Delaware Court of Chancery in hopes of getting the court to rule its actions do not constitute a breach of contract.

Both NAR and Move have declined to comment on the case when contacted by media outlets. However, real estate news service Inman noted that while the two may be clashing over the use of .realtor, they joined together last year to sue rival real estate listing service website Zillow after the president of Realtor.com defected to that company. http://bit.ly/1F8LFpM