Who can apply

• Undertakings with a registered office, central administration or principal place of business within the EU; or
• Organisations established within the EU without prejudice to the application of national law; or
• Natural persons resident within the EU

When can you apply?

• Sunrise Phase 1 – December 7, 2005 – for owners (not applicants) and licensees (no need for licence agreement, etc as there’s a special form provided by EURID for licensees and licensors) of Registered CTMs, National Trademarks (in member states) and public bodies.
• Sunrise Phase II – February 7, 2006 – for holders of other priority rights such as unregistered trademarks, trade names, business names, business identifiers, company names, family names, distinctive titles of protected literary and artistic works.
• Land Rush – April 7, 2006 – for those with no prior rights.

What can you apply for?

• A minimum of 2 characters words being “a-z”, “0-9”.
• A hyphen “-“ is allowed but a domain cannot begin or end with a hyphen.
• The maximum no of characters is 63.
• Terms must correspond exactly with the complete name for which the right is claimed. Spaces may be omitted or replaced with a dash. Other characters such as @ or & must also be omitted or replaced.
• Any prior right based on a device, figurative or composite element will only be accepted if “the general impression” of the term is applied for is “apparent without any possibility of misreading”

What can’t you apply for?

• Two character country codes (i.e. .uk.eu)
• Blocked names – these are names which cannot be registered. These include geographical names and also names which are defamatory, racist or are against public policy.
• Reserved names – these are names reserved by the national governments of the EU Member States

Term

• The term of the domain name registration is 1 year. Registration is renewable annually.

Registration Process

• Once an application has been filed with EURID, the Applicant and Document Handling Agent (us) will receive a Confirmation Notice via e-mail acknowledging receipt of the application and setting out the following details:-
• Domain Name applied for;
• Date and Time of receipt of Application by Registry;
• Position of Applicant’s Application in queue for Domain Name concerned; and
• The due date for submission of necessary documentary evidence (ie. TM registration cert, etc)
• A Cover Letter will also be made available to the Applicant/Document Handling Agent. This will have to be signed and returned to the Registry along with documentary evidence of any prior rights claimed.
• Details of the Application will then be entered on a SUNRISE WHOIS database
• The documentation goes through a validation process (PWC are the validation agents)
• The Registry registers the Domain name on a FIRST COME, FIRST SERVED basis where a prior right has been demonstrated to the satisfaction of the validation agent.
• There is a 40 day period following the registration of the Domain Name, where any interested party objecting to the registration may initiate the ADR (Alternative Dispute Resolution) Procure on grounds of non-compliance with the Regulations.

For more information, please contact Sumi Nadarajah