By David Taylor, Lovells

On April 7, 2006, the .EU Top-level Domain (TLD) opened for general registration to all businesses and individuals within the 25 member states of the European Union. This is the most heavily regulated TLD ever introduced, governed by EC Regulations, Rules and Policies.

There were over 700,000 registrations in the first four hours of the Landrush Period as European entities and citizens raced to claim a piece of virtual European property. Within just one week of launch one and a half million domain names had been registered. By 24 June 2006, this was approaching two million .EU domain names.

However, not all of this virtual land was initially available. A complex “Sunrise Period” preceded the April 7, 2006 opening. Running for a period of four months it was designed to protect existing intellectual property rights holders and allowed those eligible applicants with Prior Rights as defined to stake an early claim in the virtual .EU world matching their existing rights in the physical world. During the Sunrise Period, a total of 346,218 applications were filed for 245,908 different domain names.

The roots of .EU go back to as early as 1998. In 2000, the European Commission published a Working Paper on the creation of a new .EU Internet top-level domain setting out the case for its creation. This formed part of the European Commission’s eEurope initiative where an indicator of European identity for suppliers of services and information on the Internet was perceived as a valuable stimulus to e-commerce and to Europe’s transition to the information society.

There was concern at the time in the European Commission and elsewhere amongst European stakeholders that Europe would miss the Internet boat if the .EU domain name was not introduced rapidly. Clearly European e-commerce has managed to function and develop perfectly well without .EU over the last five years, as the TLD has moved slowly towards its long-awaited launch. This delay has also meant that .EU has had the benefit of learning from other launches of new TLDs, such as .BIZ and .INFO and the problems they encountered.

Back in 2000, the country code Top-level Domains (ccTLDs) of Europe were, for the most part, restricted to registrations from within their own national jurisdictions and only those of an unrestricted nature such as .DE and .CO.UK saw significant levels of registrations. It is no coincidence that these two ccTLDs are the two most popular in Europe. However, partially due to a desire to increase registrations but also partially in anticipation of the launch of .EU, a number of the ccTLDs have already relaxed their requirements; for example Belgium (.BE) and France (.FR) and registrations in these ccTLDs have increased considerably and of course other generic Top-level Domains (gTLDs) have also been created since 2000 (.BIZ and .INFO for example).

There have therefore, been considerable developments in the domain name world since the concept of .EU was formulated. Today .EU is sitting half way between the ccTLDs of Europe and the gTLDs; it is not a true gTLD nor is it a true ccTLD, but that is a detail. The fact is .EU is here and here to stay and despite the relaxations in requirements for European ccTLDs, .EU still has every chance of becoming one of the most important and dominant TLDs for many years to come, since it is open to every Member State of the European Union and that amounts to some 456 million people.

It has taken a long time for .EU to be fully realised, but with one in 14 people in the world living in the European Union, a population equivalent to the combined populations of the United States and Japan, potential applicants eligible for .EU are numerous and the future for .EU appears a bright one.

The Sunrise Period is only just over and the Land Rush Period has commenced with a flood of registrations in April, no doubt catching out rights owners who did not take advantage of the Sunrise Period.

It is still early days though and with the validation of prior rights under the Sunrise Period still ongoing, there will no doubt be further disappointed applicants as well as further opportunities for cybersquatters during the current open registration period, as well as the upcoming Mini Land Rush Periods.

Intellectual property rights owners across the European Union who were advised and aware of the upcoming launch and eligibility requirements of .EU were able to make timely and comprehensive applications during the Sunrise Period based upon their intellectual property rights. The result is that many secured their domain names of choice. Entities outside the European Union were able to meet the registration conditions provided they had a licensee of their relevant trademark rights based in the European Union.

However a large number of rights owners ran into trouble during the Sunrise Period due to a combination of having received poor advice plus either the rights owners or their registrar making errors in the .EU applications. In addition, any system is open to abuse, and the .EU Sunrise Period is no exception with some entities filing hundreds of Benelux trademarks in order to be able to participate in the Sunrise Period. Some of the resulting domain name applications will run into potential conflict with existing rights owners.

The Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) process introduced to overcome some of these issues aims to dissuade abusive and speculative registrations, or at least resolve any disputes over such registrations in an efficient manner.

David Taylor is a partner in the international law firm of Lovells where he specialises in Internet related intellectual property and in particular the protection of brands online. David heads up the Lovells Domain Name Practice covering the registration, recovery and protection of domain names and clients’ rights in over 160 jurisdictions.

This entry was posted in July, 2006.
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