Internet Newsletter for Lawyers
May/June 2006, by Delia Venables

.eu - New Kid on the Block
by Tim Brown

EURid, www.eurid.eu, the proud parents of the new top level domain .eu - are now finally able to show off their new offspring to the world after a long wait. The new domain .eu was conceived some years ago but its parents have had difficulties perfecting the rules and regulations associated with its arrival and registrars and registrants alike have been pacing up and down outside the delivery room waiting for their individual bundles of joy.

As with the introduction of some of the other more recent top level domains, .eu was launched with a "sunrise period". Phase 1 began in December 2005 and allowed those with existing trade mark rights to apply for domains that exactly mirrored those rights. Phase 2, which began in February, was designed to allow those with other rights such as trading names, business identifiers and family names to apply for domains. To avoid the problems that plagued the launch of other top level domains, including .info and .biz, such as the submission of false trade mark details, EURid appointed PriceWaterhouseCoopers as "validation agents" for .eu and charged them with checking each and every application to ensure the submitted prior rights were valid.

This meant that registrants had to send copies of their trade marks or notarised proof of other prior rights to PWC in Brussels before they could be approved. The rules for how evidence could be submitted were very strict; A4 size paper only; at least 200 DPI resolution; forms must be unstapled; portrait format only and so on... This was obviously too much for many applicants and over 85,000 applications expired after registrants had failed to complete the relevant paperwork in time.

The good news is that this process seems to have weeded out most of the fraudulent applications, though there is a rather grey area where some registrants used rights derived from rapidly-applied-for Benelux trade marks in some rather odd use classes so they could register generic domains. However it remains to be seen how many rights holders will be forced to resort to the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) to resolve any outstanding IP issues. Based closely on the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) used for .com (and other) domain disputes, the ADR will be administered by the Czech Arbitration Court and has yet to see any disputes at the time of writing.

.eu domains were finally made available to all-comers at the start of April and over 1.5 million domains were registered by the end of the first week of general availability (compared to 21 million .com domains now in existence – though .com, of course, had over 10 years to reach those dizzy heights). Germany has proved to be most interested with 540,000 registrations so far, followed by Britain with 320,000 and (interestingly) Holland with 200,000. The detailed figures can be seen at status.eurid.eu/registered.html.

Given that the number of registrations made within a few weeks of the land rush has already surpassed those of several country code domain spaces such as Italy (681,000 registrations) or Switzerland (442,000) and is already coming close to .co.uk, with its 3 million registrations, it certainly appears that the new kid on the block is doing well.

Where are they all?

You do not see a lot of .eu web addresses yet. A number of people are getting them as blocking domains and are just forwarding the .eu web address to their existing .com. (Try putting in the urls of some of the big name legal firms with .eu at the end instead of .com - most of them “redirect” quickly to the .com). Probably, some firms will start to use their .eu web addresses within a year or so as they a) might have got a more appropriate .eu domain compared to their .com; or b) the .eu domain might be a better way of projecting their firm, for example, if they have branches in several member states. .eu may also become more common when it comes round to headed-paper-ordering-season again!

How do you get one?

Now that the restricted sunrise period is over, anyone can register a .eu domain. There are around 1,000 registrars, see list.eurid.eu/registrars/ListRegistrars.htm?lang=en. This list can be sorted by country or by language, to make it easier to choose. Prices for registration vary quite a lot depending on what other services come bundled with the actual registration. My own company, Demys, for example, does not do “simple” registrations but offers a full IP management service for domains (rather like trade mark attorneys but with domain names).

The death of .pro?

As readers of this newsletter will recall, .pro was one of seven new top level domains introduced in 2001, along with .biz and .info mentioned above. Pitched at those in professional services .pro domains were bundled with a secure digital certificate, allowing for encrypted communications via email.

The US-based administrator of the domain, RegistryPro, at www.registrypro.pro, now allows members of the medical, legal, accounting and engineering professions who are licensed in the USA, Canada, Germany or UK to register a .pro domain. Registrants can secure profession-specific third-level names such as [name].law.pro, [name].med.pro and [name].cpa.pro.

Furthermore, anyone with existing trade mark rights can register a ".ProBlock Intellectual Property Defensive Registration" which is designed to prevent other entities from registering a domain that might infringe existing IP rights. However RegistryPro's rules prescribe that the domain cannot be used for email or web page services.

Unfortunately for the legal professional, .pro domains are far from the cheapest top level domain – at the time of writing I found the average cost of a basic .pro domain to be in the region of USD$220 (GBP£125) with a .ProBlock registration being approximately ten times that amount. When compared to the cost of a .com, .co.uk or .ie of about GBP£50 it is not surprising that .pro has failed to catch on.

While RegistryPro does not release official figures detailing the numbers of .pro registrations, I conducted a quick survey of the office in preparation for this article and none of us had seen a .pro being actively used by any UK or Irish law firm (or indeed used by any firm in any jurisdiction).

Some industry commentators are now questioning the value of the .pro domain given its limited availability, high cost and lack of recognition. It is certainly not expected to eclipse other domains, such as .com, in popularity either with professionals or clients. Furthermore the defensive registrations have been criticised, being seen by some as a cynical strategy to generate revenue through registrations that cannot be used for any practical purpose and, given RegistryPro's registration restrictions, to defend against a non-existent threat.

So while it may have promised much, .pro has been largely ignored by the legal and other professions and given the success of new upstarts like .eu, it is surely now time to lay .pro to rest. No flowers.

Tim Brown is senior domain name consultant with Edinburgh-based Demys Limited, www.demys.com. Demys are specialist Internet Intellectual Property Managers and are EURid approved registrars.

Email t.brown@demys.com.

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