February 2008
Rush now for .asia domains
General members of the public can now apply for .asia domain names in the third and final Landrush phase of the application procedure before .asia goes live on 26 March 2007. The previous stages of the application process (Sunrise) have been restricted to governmental bodies and organisations. After the first day of the Landrush, there were a total of 300,000 domain applications - not too surprising considering that the .asia domain covers 73 countries across the Asian and Pacific regions.
The Landrush phase commenced on 20 February 2008 and closes on 12 March 2008. Any member of the public can apply. At least one of the Domain contacts associated with each application must be a legal entity in Asia, however registrars such as domain registrar, NetNames, can act as this contact. Visit the DotAsia site at http://www.registry.asia/ for more information about the .asia domain and application process. If you want to register a domain, you will need to go through an approved registrar such as NetNames - http://www.netnames.co.uk/dnrs/netnames.client.Login or one of the other registrars listed on the DotAsia site. If there is more than one successfully verified application for a domain, then all successful applicants are invited to bid for the domain in an auction process. From 26 March 2008, registration of domains will be on a first come, first served basis.
NetNames has commented that opening .asia to the general public means that businesses may be at risk of losing domains containing their brand name to competitors or cyber-squatters. UK businesses in particular need to be careful as they are lagging behind their US and German entities in the applications for domains so far.
Briffa’s comment
If you have a UK brand and are thinking of expanding into Asia, get in quick to apply for the domain name! Being the registered holder of a domain makes your position a lot stronger if a competitor accuses you of infringing any rights they claim in the domain name. If you do miss out on registering a domain name that you or your business has rights in, there are some options available to you but it is a much harder road to go down. We can advise you on the best way to proceed to try and have the domain name transferred to you. If you have business interests in Asia, you should also talk to us about applying for registered trade marks.
You must have legitimate interests in the domain name you plan to register. You cannot use the registered domain in bad faith - For example, for the purposes of bullying an entity who has registered trade marks in the name into buying the domain for an extortionate amount. Disputes over who is entitled to a domain name can be resolved by way of a dispute resolution process. The ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Numbers and Names) process is quite widely used. The cases that have been gone to court in the UK have been brought on the basis of trade mark infringement or the tort of passing off. As the first case was only in 1997, the law in this area is still evolving and it cannot be said that there are any clear established rules at this stage. For the moment, it seems that the act of applying for a domain name that contains another’s mark will not in itself amount to trademark infringement but the use of that domain could be.
If you are interested in applying for a .asia domain or have a query or dispute concerning a domain name, please contact us.