At first this may seem like a silly question. You have already printed it on umpteen thousand brochures, submitted it to the search engines, attached it to letterhead and business cards, and maybe even named your company after it.
Now that we have established that your domain name is a very valuable piece of your identity, what would you do to protect it? Probably just about anything, including a trip to the courthouse to protect it as a copyright or trademark. Given all of this, you probably think you have all of your bases covered. Think again.
As more companies realize that just being on the Internet isn't enough, they are relocating their domains to service providers that better meet their needs. This has lead to a startling discovery. Unless you are listed as the administrative contact for your domain, you are not really in control of it.
According to the Internic (the organization responsible for authorizing domain name registrations) the administrative contact is defined as:
...the person or organization authorized by the domain name Registrant to act on behalf of the legal entity listed in Item 3a. The Administrative Contact/Agent should be able to answer non-technical questions about the legal entity's plans for using the domain name and the procedures for establishing sub-domains.
It is very possible that the administrative contact is in fact not the rightful owner of the name. Internic defines the owner to be the registrant:
The domain name is considered to be registered to a "legal entity", even if the legal entity is an individual (e.g., Lee Smith). Do not list a "dba" or acronym as the registrant. In this section, it is important to list the legal name and address of the Registrant, not the Internet Service Provider ("ISP").
This is not really a problem until you want to relocate your domain. In order to move your domain, you must submit a "change of registration" form to the Internic. The only persons who can authorize this change are the administrative or technical contacts (the technical contact is typically a network administrator at the company hosting your domain). Herein lies the problem. If you are using an unscrupulous service provider, they will not allow the domain name to be relocated. I personally experienced this one time with a client of mine. It cost him a great deal of time, money and lost business to register a new domain. He also had to inform his customers about the change. All because his provider would not allow the domain to be moved.
How do you protect yourself? Go to the Internic "Whois" database right now and enter your domain name (minus the "www"). If you do not see yourself listed as the administrative contact (or worse yet, if you do not see your company listed as the registrant), contact your service provider immediately and demand that the registration be changed to reflect you as the administrative contact. Past experience says that your service provider will comply within a day to as long as a month. Even if you have to call them every day for a month, the time will be well spent it if you decide to move your domain.