Can the name of a game to be played on Internet be registered as a trademark?

The progress of Internet and creation of new business related to it generates several problems to traders and legal representatives, forced to interpret, and adapting the regulations not born for the technological world of the computers. In fact, before introducing a trademark on Internet, it is prudent to do an international novelty search, ensuring nobody else has already registered a similar mark in some part of the world. However, this type of search is not only difficult but also costly, so companies reduce it to countries where the web is most spread, such as the United States, the United Kingdom, besides Italy of course; others, instead, limit it to the national territory, even if there could be some risks, as demonstrated by the court case between the American PlayBoy and the Italian PlayMan, to which the American judge forced the closure of the Internet site until it succeeded in preventing the diffusion of the site in the United States, where PlayMan could not distribute its trademark as similar to the one registered by PlayBoy. PlayMan can quite validly use the trademark in Italy, but as there is not a technology allowing distributing Internet pages only in certain parts of the world, he was forced to close his web site. Affixing the ® of registered trademark is another problem: in fact if your own trademark is registered only in Italy, in theory it would not be possible affixing that symbol if the mark was distributed in the United States, or in any other countries where it is not registered. All of these problems are at the moment difficult to resolve and the jurists worldwide have been working during the last few years to find a solution to new phenomenon where the old rules cannot be adapted. For now the best advice is to do a search on novelty at least amongst the Italian and American trademarks, then proceed with the registration of the trademark at least in Italy and its induction on the web, providing himself with a proof on paper or digital support of the date when the insertion on the Internet has been done.