@violet @chriswho I am personally aware of these kinds of situations, not only because of my involvement with ICANN but also because our company (and myself) have had (and still have) nice three letter domain names in .com and .org (sometimes with pairs in each of those TLDs.)

(We've sold some, given some away [we didn't realize their marke value at the time], and been threatened. Fortunately we have had these since before the dawn of the world wide web, so we can play a pretty big "we were there first" trump card.)

I believe domain names are slowly fading as good trademark properties, but I doubt that it will ever go away.

I wrote this in 2017...

Domain Names Are Fading From User View

cavebear.com/cavebear-blog/fad