.eu open registration
The date for the launch of open registration of .eu is 7 April.
The Sunrise Period, which has now been running for nearly four
months, will end on 6 April. The Sunrise Period has allowed holders
of 'prior rights' (e.g. trademarks, company names, public bodies) to
register their brands in .eu. There has been tremendous interest in
.eu, to the extent of over 300,000 applications. Over 22,000 .eu
domain names are active now.
Open registration will allow any individual or company resident
in the European Union to register available .eu domains, without the
need for a trademark or other right to a name. There will be huge
competition for valuable generic terms, but it will also be an
opportunity for businesses to secure words or phrases that might be important to their marketing plans. It is also an opportunity for
individuals to secure their family name in the .eu domain space.
In order to secure your place in our queue for open registration,
please go to www.netnames.com.
If you wish to make a Sunrise application before the period ends,
go to www.gtld.com.
Note that applications are processed on a first-come, first-served
basis.
.mobi
set for launch in May
The .mobi TLD now has a schedule for launch. Designed
specifically for the delivery of web content to mobile phones,
dotmobi is being made reality by the registry, mobile Top Level
Domain Ltd (mTLD), and a number of leading Internet and Mobile
providers. The concept behind the new suffix is that it has
traditionally been difficult to deliver web content to mobile phones
- common issues have included the 'timing out' of web pages and high
bandwidth charges.
By creating a (web)space optimised for mobile phones, it is hoped
that much more of the Internet will be made available to mobile
consumers at cheaper prices. mTLD will publish a series of guides to
help .mobi owners create ideal mobile web content for their
visitors. An example of one of the recommendations made is that the
URL of the landing page of a .mobi website should be a second-level
domain, i.e. netnames.mobi, rather than including the third-level 'www'.
Mobile web deliverability is very much a growth market. Latest
figures suggest that four times as many people access the internet
through a mobile device as opposed to a PC.
The schedule for rollout of dotmobi is shown below:
Sunrise
22-29 May
.......................................................................................
Limited Industry Sunrise for the mobile industry
12 June-21 August
........................................................................
Trademark Sunrise for all trademark holders
General Registration
28 August-10 September
.............................................................
Landrush (during this period .mobi domains will be available at a
premium price)
From 14 September
......................................................................
Ongoing registration at standard price
For more information, please visit our specialist domain site www.gtld.com.
More details will be published in N3Lite as soon as they are made
available.
Here are some links to coverage of .mobi in online media:
http://sg.biz.yahoo.com/060316/15/3zf55.html
(Yahoo!)
http://www.forbes.com/intelligentinfrastructure/2006/03/21/mobile-internet-phone_cx_df_0322mobile.html
(Forbes.com)
.pr (Puerto Rico) available to non-trademark
holders from 1 April
The .pr Top Level Domain (TLD) will be made available to
non-trademark holders (individuals or companies) from 1 April
(although this date may yet be subject to change by the registry).
There will no longer be a requirement to submit trademark documents
in order to register a .pr domain name, meaning that anyone can now
register the suffix.
The .pr domain will hold value for the promotion of campaigns on
the web, or the direction of web browsers towards PR-related pages
of a website. As well as this, a .pr domain may be valuable to you
as a defensive registration, in terms of protecting a brand on the
web that you do not hold a trademark for.
In order to register .pr, either contact your Platinum Account
Manager (if applicable) or visit www.netnames.com
now. Registration of .pr includes up to 10
sub-domains under the domain name.
Concerns over brand credibility in China
Changes to the domain name dispute resolution policy in China
came into effect on 17 March. In brief, they are as follows:
- Complaints will no longer be accepted about .cn domains that
have been registered for more than two years. Complainants in
such cases would instead be forced to file civil lawsuits in the
Chinese courts.
- The definition of 'bad faith' has changed. To qualify as 'bad
faith', the owner must have attempted to sell the domain name to
the complainant, or to a competitor. If the owner attempts to
sell the domain to any other party, it is no longer considered
'bad faith', in China.
- Legitimate use of a domain name will no longer require the
acquisition of a corresponding national trademark - instead the
registrant may simply have been using the domain name for
commercial or non-commercial purposes.
In addition, a recent news item on CNNMoney.com - see it at http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/07/news/international/trademark_squatting/index.htm
- suggests that concerns are rising over brand credibility
in China. Brand owners should be mindful of protecting their online
intellectual property in the Chinese domain space.
.pk (Pakistan) open launch delayed
The launch of unrestricted, first-come, first-served availability
of .pk at the second level has been delayed until the end of April. We will
inform you as soon as we know the revised
launch date.
Private individuals can now apply for .fi
(Finland)
Since the beginning of March, private persons aged at least 15
years, with a Finnish personal ID number and resident in a Finnish
municipality, have been allowed to apply for .fi domains. Prior to
this, in order to register .fi one had to be listed in the Finnish
Business Register.
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Copyright NetNames 2006. All rights reserved.
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