Issue 204 - 26 January 2006

.eu (Europe) Sunrise - Phase 2 starts 7 February

Phase 1 of the .eu Sunrise Period, which limited applicants to registered trademark holders, public bodies and holders of geographical indicators or designations of origin, is scheduled to finish on 6 February.

Some .eu applications have recently been given a status of 'Accepted', according to EURid's WHOIS page at www.whois.eu (EURid is the registry operator for the .eu domain). This means that the applicants for these domains satisfied the qualification requirements, and submitted the appropriate supporting documentary evidence to the Validation Agent (PricewaterhouseCoopers) within the allotted 40 days.

An accepted domain should be active 40 days after being given a status of 'Accepted', as long as no appeals are received by EURid from other applicants for the same name.

Phase 2 will run from 7 February to 6 April. During this period EURid will accept applications from the following categories of rights holders (as well as those that were applicable to Phase 1, licensees of registered trademarks excepted*):

• Company Names, Trade Names, or Business Identifiers 
• Unregistered Trademarks 
• Owners of a distinctive title of a protected literary or artistic work 
• Other (as long as that right is protected by the prevailing law of an EU member state)

A high number of Phase 2 applications are expected, as the requirements for qualification open the floor up to a much larger pool of potential registrants.

Phase 2 will be followed by the first-come, first-served Open Registration period (sometimes called 'Landrush'), where the only requirement to make an application for an available domain will be residence within the European Union.

So far EURid has received some 166,000 Sunrise applications, the most (35%) having come from German applicants.

In order to make a Sunrise application, please go to our specialist website www.gtld.com.

In order to pre-register for the Open Registration period, please visit www.netnames.com.

* Note that licensees of registered trademarks can only apply for a .eu domain under the category of registered trademark holder during Phase 1 of Sunrise (i.e. before 6 February).

Afilias chosen as registry for .aero

It was announced earlier this month that Afilias, the registry operator for .info, has been chosen to manage registry services for the .aero sponsored Top Level Domain (sTLD), dedicated to the aviation industry. Afilias signed an agreement with SITA SC, a not-for-profit cooperative providing network and communications solutions to organisations, particularly those in the air transport industry, undertaking to manage registry operations and provide technical and administrative support. SITA SC will continue to manage the verification process for applications, and allocation of domains. The agreement between SITA SC and the previous operator SITA INC B.V. expired in December 2005.

.cn (China) passes the 1 million registrations mark

According to the Chinese registry operator, the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), the number of .cn domain registrations has passed 1 million. This represents an annual increase of 154% and, at nearly 1.1M, puts China in sixth place globally, in terms of the number of registrations of a particular TLD.