Domain Name Dispute Search Engine Launch

DomainDisputes.co is a free domain name dispute search engine, recently launched by UK brand protection company Lexsynergy Limited, which will assist lawyers and trade mark owners to tackle domain name infringements.

The international nature of domain name disputes (cybersquatting and typosquatting) means that trade mark owners and lawyers need to search various independent dispute resolution databases in order to establish whether a potential respondent has a track record or to locate a precedent. The problem, until now, was the absence of a centralised database from which a potential complainant could search multiple domain name dispute databases at once.

DomainDisputes.co is the first such service to streamline and simplify the domain name dispute search process by covering several domain name dispute providers such as the World Intellectual Property Organisation, National Arbitration Forum, Nominet, Czech Arbitration Court, South African Institute of Intellectual Property Law, New Zealand Domain Name Commission, Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre, Asian Domain Name Dispute Resolution Centre and Kuala Lumpur Regional Centre for Arbitration. The results can be exported into a spreadsheet containing links to the respective decisions identified in the search result.

About Lexsynergy Limited

Lexsynergy Limited is an ICANN accredited domain name management (Lexsynergy.com) and online brand protection company (RegainYourDomain.com). RegainYourDomain.com allows trade mark owners to recover domain names efficiently and cost effectively in accordance with a pre-determined domain name recovery strategy. Lexsynergy has offices in the UK, Austria, Australia and South Africa with a satellite presence in Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia.

.UK Short Name Release Update

We have updated our post on the .uk short domain name release. Please view here (http://blog.lexsynergy.com/2010/11/uk-short-name-release.html).

.SO (Somalia) Sunrise Period extended to 31 December 2010.

.SO (Somalia) Sunrise Period has been extended to 31 December 2010. SO trade mark owners still have time to secure their .SO domain names.

Email domains@lexsynergy.com for more information.

co.zm Domain Names

Lexsynergy now has a local presence in Zambia through Lexsynergy (Zambia) Limited.

We are able to provide foreign registrants with a local presence in Zambia in order to fulfil the local presence requirement imposed by the ZM registry.

Email domains@lexsynergy.com for assistance in securing your domain name in Zambia.

.UK Short Name Release - 1 December 2010

Nominet (.uk registry) will start accepting applications to register "short" domain names from 12:00 GMT on 1 December 2010. The list of domain names to be released can be viewed here.

The complete rules relating to the release process can be viewed here.

There will be four phases:

1. Registered Rights Sunrise (1 December 2010 – 17 January 2011)

Reserved for holders of Eligible Trade Marks exactly matching the short domain being made available (excluding the suffix co.uk, org. uk etc) and in force as of 1 January 2008 AND who can provide evidence of bona fide use in the UK on or before 1 January 2008, to the satisfaction of an independent IP rights validation assessor.

2. Unregistered Rights Sunrise (to be confirmed)

Reserved for holders of registered and unregistered trade marks. The Unregistered Rights Sunrise phase is for (i) any person who would have qualified for the first sunrise but missed the application deadline and (ii) the holders of unregistered rights enforceable in the UK exactly matching the short domain being made available and in force as of 1 January 2008 AND who can provide evidence of bona fide use in the UK on or before 1 January 2008, to the satisfaction of an independent IP rights validation assessor.

After submitting the application a unique identifier is sent to us. This reference number will be used to complete the IP rights validation. The deadline for applying to have IP rights validated is 1200 GMT on 31 January 2011.

Evidence of use of the trade mark in the UK on or before 1 January 2008 is required in pdf format. The dated evidence should include:

• Marketing material, such as copies of posters, mailers, packaging, point of sale material, stills of TV ads;
• Documents such as invoices, correspondence and annual reports;
• Photos of actual products bearing the mark.
Important Points
• The Applicant and the owner of the registration cited must be the same individual or corporate body.
• me.uk application can only be made by individuals.
• The trade mark registration must be identical to the domain name(s) applied for (except .co.uk etc suffixes).
• Nominet will accept:
o letter combinations separated by gaps (i.e. "A A"), by full stops (i.e. "A.A."), because full stops are customarily used to indicate gaps; and
o in trade mark registrations for logos or devices that include text, non-textual elements (i.e. A[picture]A).
• Nominet will not accept:
o letter combinations separated by other punctuation (i.e. "A,A")
o letter combinations separated by "and", "&" or similar (i.e. "A and A", "A&A", "A'n’A")

3. Landrush (to be confirmed)

Interested parties can register domain names not previously registered through the Registered Rights Sunrise or the Unregistered Rights Sunrise.

4. General Availability (to be confirmed)

Domain names not previously registered through the Registered Rights Sunrise, Unregistered Rights Sunrise or the Landrush will be available for registration on a first-come, first-served basis.

Multiple applications: At each stage, where there are two or more qualifying applicants for a domain name, an open auction process will be used to decide the successful applicant, with any profits going to Nominet Trust.

An “Eligible Trade Mark” is a trade mark which has been registered and where the registration meets the following criteria:

• The mark text of the trade mark exactly matches the domain name being applied for;
• The trade mark registration is in force in the UK;
• The registration date of the trade mark is on or before 1 January 2008;
• The trade mark continues to be in force at the date the Application is validated by the Validation Agent; and
• The trade mark has been put to use in the UK in relation to a genuine offering of goods or services on or before 1 January 2008 as determined by the Validation Agent in its absolute discretion.

Costs

Registered Rights Sunrise - £110.00 per domain name (including the validation and two year registration fee)
Unregistered Rights Sunrise – £120.00 per domain name (including the validation and two year registration fee)

The Sunrise Whois is accessible here.

All application requests must be emailed to domains@lexsynergy.com.

The costs exclude VAT and are non-refundable.

IDN Domains for Israel (co.il)

Israel Internet Association (ISOC-IL) is accepting Hebrew character domain names. The launch of Hebrew IDNs (Internationalised Domain Names) started with a Sunrise Period, which ends on 30 October 2010.

Sunrise Eligibility

Only the following parties are eligible to submit an IDN Sunrise applications:

* Owners of registered Israeli Trade Marks
* An Israeli Legal Entity
* Only holders of a valid ISP License issued by the State of Israel – Ministry of Communications, which is in full force and effect on the Effective Date are eligible to submit Sunrise applications for Hebrew IDNs under the .net.il

The IDN domain name must match the trademarks or entities’ registered names

Note: Any rights in a registered domain name, under .il, does not grant any eligibility during the Sunrise Period for Hebrew IDNs.

Please contact domains@lexsynergy.com for more information regarding .il IDN registrations.

Local Presence for TZ (Tanzania) Domains

Lexsynergy has an official presence in Tanzania. We are proud to announce the establishment of Lexsynergy Reg TZ Limited, which will enable our clients to register co.tz domain name in accordance with the local presence requirements.

Promotion of .GM (Gambia) domain names

Gambia is the smallest country on mainland Africa located in the western region of the continent. The Top Level Domain (TLD) assigned to Gambia is .GM.

As part of our commitment to promote African TLDs we are encouraging our clients, who actively seek to protect their marks around the world, to extend their scope of protection and register a .GM domain name. There are no restrictions and a registration costs £35 per year.

A .GM is also used as a domain name for general managers.

.SO another ccTLD Launch (Somalia)

Launch of .SO (Somalia) domain name

.SO is the country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) assigned to The Republic of Somalia, which will be re-launched as an unrestricted ccTLD.

According to the current draft policies the following extensions will be available for registration:

.so – general purposes
com.so – commercial entities
net.so – network use
org.so – not for profit organisations

Proposed Launch Schedule

Sunrise (November 1st - November 30th, 2010)

Holders (owners, licensees or assignees) of Eligible Trademarks will have the opportunity to submit a corresponding application for the registration of a domain name in the .SO TLD. If more than one Applicant has submitted an Application during this phase for an identical domain name, it will be registered following the outcome of an auction process.

An Eligible Trademark is a registered trade mark that:

• has been issued by any competent public authority and has national effect; and
• was registered on or before 1 January 2010; and
• is in full force and effect when the application is validated by the clearinghouse appointed by the .SO registry.

An applicant cannot rely on a trade mark application, common law trade mark or US state trade mark.

Sunrise Auction (December 1st - December 15th, 2010)

Auction for domain names with more than one credible application.

Landrush (December 16th - February 9th, 2011)

Domain names not previously registered or applied for during the Sunrise Process may be registered by any interested party. If more than two Applicants have submitted an Application during this phase for an identical domain name, it will be placed into an auction.

Landrush Auction (February 10th - February 28th, 2011)

Auction for domain names with more than one credible application.

General Availability (March 1st, 2011)

Domain names will be registered on a “first come, first served” basis.

Email domains@lexsynergy.com for the draft .so domain name registration policies.
The domain name prices will be made available during October 2010.

Release of UK reserved short domains

Nominet, the UK domain name registry, has announced it intends to release short domain names (two and three character domains) before the end of 2010. They will publish full details of the final release process on 1 November 2010.

What will not be permitted?

Characters corresponding to an existing SLD (Second Level Domain) in .uk shall not be permitted as a Third Level Domain within co.uk, me.uk, org.uk and net.uk. At present it includes: ac, co, gov, ltd, me, mil, mod, net, nhs, nic, org, plc, police, com, uk and sch.

Proposed release process

There will be a two-stage sunrise and a landrush release process.

1. First sunrise

Reserved for the holders of registered trade marks enforceable in the UK exactly corresponding to the third level combination being made available and in force as of 1 January 2008 AND who can provide evidence of bona fide use in the UK on or before 1 January 2008, to the satisfaction of an independent assessor.

2. Second sunrise

Reserved for:
(i) any person who would have qualified for the first sunrise but missed the application deadline; and
(ii) holders of unregistered rights enforceable in the UK exactly corresponding to the third level combination being made available and in force as of 1 January 2008 AND who can provide evidence of bona fide use in the UK on or before 1 January 2008, to the satisfaction of an independent assessor.

Landrush

Following the two sunrises, there will be a period of open application.

Auction phase

At each stage, where there are two or more qualifying applicants for a domain name, an open auction process will be used to decide the successful applicant, with any profits going to the Nominet Trust. Once the auction has been completed the successful applicant will be entitled to register the domain name.

As an accredited Nominet registrar Lexsynergy will be able to assist with short domain name applications. Email domains@lexsynergy.com for a copy of the list of domain names to be released.

What are co.za domains worth?

It has been reported that property.co.za was sold for $56000, life.co.za for $14536 and autoinsurance.co.za for $36500.

Unlike trade marks the more descriptive the domain name, the more valuable it is. Instead of discarding generic domain names, it may be worth selling them to recoup costs and more.

If you need assistance recovering, acquiring or selling a domain name contact our specialist RegainYourDomain.com team at recovery@regainyourdomain.com.

CO - Squatting minefield

.CO is the county code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) assigned to Colombia. Besides serving the function of a ccTLD. It is also a popular branding tool since the two letters CO are the recognizable abbreviations for Company, Commerce and Communications and of course a misspelling of COM.

Due to its popularity (over 500 000 registered domains) CO is becoming a target for squatting activities and we therefore recommend that trade mark owners, as a defensive measure, register CO domain names that match their COM domain names.

Contact domains@lexsynergy.com or go to www.lexsynergy.tel for more contact information.

Changes to Saudi (.sa) Regulations

SaudiNIC has published amended domain name regulations. The most important changes include:

• an administrative contact that must be a natural person, based in Saudi Arabia.
• the introduction of the second Top Level Domain .sa in addition to com.sa.
• a registrant must be one of the following:

1. An entity physically located in Saudi Arabia
2. A natural person, not underage, with a Saudi national identification card or equivalent document issued by the Ministry of Interior of Saudi Arabia;
3. An entity with a registration or license issued by a pertinent authority in Saudi Arabia
4. An owner of a trademark or trade name that is registered in Saudi Arabia.

Email domains@lexsynergy.com for the amended regulations.

Sri Lanka Domain - .lk

The island country of Sri Lanka, located south east of India, seems to have trade mark owners at heart when it deals with domain names as explained by the following example.

The registration of lexsynergy.lk automatically blocks the registration of the following .lk extensions:

lexsynergy.com.lk
lexsynergy.org.lk
lexsynergy.edu.lk
lexsynergy.ngo.lk
lexsynergy.soc.lk
lexsynergy.web.lk
lexsynergy.ltd.lk
lexsynergy.assn.lk
lexsynergy.grp.lk
lexsynergy.hotel.lk

This approach limits the number of domain names a trade mark owner needs to register ultimately reducing the costs associated with domain name registrations and renewals.
GET ONE, GET ALL.

If you need assistance registering domain names in Sri Lanka email domains@lexsynergy.com.

Domain Name Recovery

The vast number of registered domain names has made it increasingly difficult to find suitable domain names, making purchasing a domain name from a third party a viable option.

Negotiating the purchase of a domain name requires a strategy that will ensure the domain name is acquired at the lowest possible cost. Once the purchase price is agreed, the next step is payment and then transfer through an escrow agent.

It is crucial to ensure the domain name has been transferred and not merely updated as a transfer implies a transfer of control, while an update is merely a change of information without transfer of control.

We have developed a specialised online domain name recovery control panel that allows our clients to recover domain names with the support of domain name negotiation and resolution experts.

Visit www.RegainYourDomain.com for more information or call +442081331319.

.co General Availability Stage Begins 20 July 2010

The .co General Availability Stage begins on 20 July 2010, 20:00 (CEST).
During this phase registrations will be open to the general public irrespective of location on a first-come, first-served basis.

Lexsynergy will be accepting pre-registration applications until July 19, 2010, 16:00 (CEST).

Cost: £39 per year

.CO Landrush Period Extended

The .co registry has announced the extension of the .co Landrush Period until 16 July 2010 at 12:00 pm EDT.

On 20 July 2010 .co domain names will become available for registration on a first come, first served basis.

We wonder whether the extension of this Landrush Period is intended for the benefit of the Internet community or the coffers of the .co registry.

Saudi Arabia IDN Sunrise Phase Ends

The Sunrise Period for Arabic domain names in Saudi Arabia ended today (12 July 2010). The next phase (Landrush) will start on Monday 27 September 2010.

During the Landrush Phase applications will be accepted from members of the general public on a first come, first served basis.

General Rules
The registrant must fall under one of the following categories:
1. An entity physically located in Saudi Arabia;
2. A natural person, not underage, with a Saudi national identification card or equivalent document issued by the Ministry of Interior of Saudi Arabia;
3. An entity with a registration or license issued by a pertinent authority in Saudi Arabia;
4. An owner of a trade mark or trade name that is registered in Saudi Arabia.

The administrative contact should be a natural person based in Saudi Arabia.

Contact us at domains@lexsynergy.com or www.lexsynergy.tel for more information.

CTM v Domain Names

We advise owners of Community Trade Marks to register their marks as domain names in each ccTLD within the European Union. This will go some way in reducing the trade mark owner's exposure to cybersquatting, which in turn reduces the costs of domain name recovery. A domain name registration is an extension of a trade mark and two should co-exist to offer the maximum amount of protection.

Lexsynergy provides training to IP professionals and trade mark owners on how to best deal with domain names as part of a comprehensive brand protection strategy.

Estonian registry has temporarily stopped accepting domain applications

The Estonian registry posted the following notice on its website on 5 July 2010:

"Estonian Internet Foundation asks patience from registrants. Apparently not all registrars had equivalent access to our Registry. The registry-registrar model requires that all registrars are treated as equals thus registrations from all registrars were ceased until further test can be carried out with all parties involved. Registrars will continue to accept all applications from registrants. Registry will be restarted after exhaustive tests have been carried out. In order to guarantee stability of the access some changes will have to be carried out in RIPE database.

It is vitally important to ensure all registrars will have equal access to the registry. Estonian Internet Foundation would like to sincerely apologise for any inconvienience and will inform shortly of the time when registry operations will continue."

Important CN Notice

The .CN Registry (CNNIC) has informed us, on short notice, that all .cn registrants will receive or should have received an email from CNNIC requesting the registrant to confirm the registrant information for each .cn domain name. In essence it confirms the validity of the registrant email address.

The subject line of the e-mail is "Domain Name Information Confirmation". The email contains a link, which when clicked on will confirm the registration. If this is not done within 15 days of receipt of the email, the domain name will be processed according to the "relevant provisions of the Registry". This statement is unclear and could possibly mean deletion.

We are awaiting more information from CNNIC so we ask until then that you confirm each registration. Please pass this information onto your clients or registrants of .cn domain names.

Feel free to email any questions to domains@lexsynergy.com

.ee (Estonia) Liberalization

.ee is the Top Level Domain for the EU member state of Estonia. The current restrictive registration rules of one domain name per Estonian citizen will be replaced on 5 July 2010 with more liberalised registration rules.

The rules provide that any person or company can register a .ee domain name provided they have a local administrative contact in Estonia with a personal identification number.

Lexsynergy will start registering .ee domain names on 5 July 2010 for £39.00 per year. If you do not have a local administrative contact we will provide one at an additional cost of £50.00 per year.

We strongly advise all owners of European trade marks (CTM) to register their trade marks within this extension to avoid possible acts of cybersquatting.

We will start accepting applications from 28 June 2010.

.co Landrush begins 21 June 2010

The .co Landrush stage begins on 21 June 2010 until 13 July 2010.

During this stage domain names of high commercial value may be registered without restriction. In essence, a higher price is charged for .co domain names prior to the general availability stage. If more than one application is received, the domain name will be allocated through an auction process.

Trade mark owners who have not yet secured .co domain names should do it at this stage.

Saudi Arabia Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs)

SaudiNIC, the registry responsible for the administration of the Saudi Arabia country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) .SA recently announced the launch of the Arabic IDN السعودية.

Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) are domain names that contain characters which
are used in the local representation of languages that contain characters other than from the Latin alphabet such as the Swedish å and the German ü.

Example: The domain name Bücher.at would then be translated into xn--bcher-kva.at.

In the Arabic context the .SA extension is written as السعودية. and then translated into xn--mgberp4a5d4ar.

The extension will be launched in two phases:

Sunrise Phase
(31 May - 12 July 2010)

Applications will be accepted from any entity or individual who has a registered company name or trade mark with the Ministry of Trade and Industry in Saudi Arabia, including all governmental authorities and organizations.

The domain name application must correspond to the Arabic name or mark (without alteration, abbreviation, or translation) as they appear in the commercial registration or trade mark registration certificate.

If more than one application is received from different qualified applicants for the same domain name, that meet the requirements, priority will be given to applications from governmental entities. Otherwise, priority will be given to the applicant of earliest right based on the submitted documentation (e.g., commercial certificate, trade mark certificate date).

Landrush Phase
(27 September 2010 onwards)
Applications will be accepted from members of the general public on a first come, first served
basis.

General Rules
The registrant must fall under one of the following categories:
1. An entity physically located in Saudi Arabia;
2. A natural person, not underage, with a Saudi national identification card or equivalent document issued by the Ministry of Interior of Saudi Arabia;
3. An entity with a registration or license issued by a pertinent authority in Saudi Arabia;
4. An owner of a trade mark or trade name that is registered in Saudi Arabia.

The administrative contact should be a natural person based in Saudi Arabia.

SaudiNIC may, at any time, request additional information and documentations from the Registrant.

Additional Information
The domain name should contain at least 3 symbols and should not start or end with a dash “-“ or have two consecutive dashes.
Each domain name should have some reasonable relationship to the Registrant.
SaudiNIC shall determine what a reasonable relationship is and what documentation is required to show reasonableness.

Application Procedure
All requests for a Saudi Arabia IDN or general queries relating to IDNs should be emailed to our Domain Name Department (domains@lexsynergy.com).
We are also contactable at +44 20 81331319 or visit www.lexsynergy.tel.

.tel IDN

An internationalized domain name (IDN) is an internet domain name that contains at least one character in a language-specific script or alphabet, such as Chinese, Russian or the Latin-based languages with diacritics, such as German, for example, Jörn.tel. For more information about IDNs.

From 15th of June (3 p.m. BST), .tel domains will support IDN names in the following languages: Chinese, Danish, Finnish, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish.

Apart from the restrictions on the types of characters that can be registered and the languages supported, there are no further restrictions on the registration of IDN.tel domain names and 1 and 2 character IDNs are available.

Registrations will start on a first-come, first served basis.

Email domains@lexsynergy.com for more information.

.CO - Sunrise B starting 26 April 2010

.CO is the county code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) assigned to Colombia. Besides serving the function of a ccTLD it will also become a popular branding tool on the Internet since the two letters CO are the recognizable abbreviations for Company, Commerce and Communications.

Trade mark owners around the world who have trade marks registered on or before 30 July 2008 will be able to register matching second level .CO domain names.

Trade mark owners are encouraged to take advantage of the Sunrise B period to avoid exposing their trade marks to infringements such as cybersquatting.

Lexsynergy is now accepting pre-registration orders.

CO.ZA Service Outage - Down and Out

co.za is the most popular Second Level Domain (SLD) in South Africa with over 500 000 registrations. Uniforum SA is the organisation responsible for managing this SLD.

Currently co.za registrations and updates are processed via text emails. Once the form is completed it is emailed to the registry who generates a ticket that is sent to each Whois contact to accept. If at least one contact accepts the update will be confirmed approximately 24 hours later. If one contact denies the ticket the update is rejected.

The problem with this process is that it takes 1 day to effect any changes to a co.za domain name, which includes changes to nameservers. On Sunday 4 April 2010 co.za went down which meant no registrations, renewals or updates could be processed. To make matters worse it has taken over 5 days to fix the issue and still domain name renewals cannot be processed.

We believe this issue highlights the need to reassess the systems used to manage the co.za extension. Hopefully .zadna (www.zadna.org.za) will speed up the reform of co.za to bring it in-line with other country code Top Level Domains.

.RU Document Requirement

The .RU registry has introduced new registration rules. Registrants of .RU domain names need to verify their identity by submitting documents to the .RU registry.

What documents have to be submitted?
Legal entities / companies: A copy of the company registration document confirming the registration of the legal entity issued by the relevant state authority.
Natural persons and entrepreneurs: copy of passport.

These changes also apply to all existing .RU registrations. If the documents are not submitted to the registry it may result in the deletion of domains.

The documents may be submitted in the language of issue, translation is not necessary.

New .au Domain Renewal, Expiry and Deletion Policy

auDA (the registry responsible for .au domain names) recently announced it will implement a new Domain Renewal, Expiry and Deletion Policy on 21 March 2010.

Under the new Policy:

• Registrars will be able to offer registrants a "domain sync" service, which allows a registrant to change the expiry date of all its .au domains to a date that is less than 2 years from the date of registration. This means that a registrant of numerous .au domain names can choose a common expiry date for all its domains. This will be useful from a domain name management perspective.
• The expiry procedure will operate as follows: Expiry Date -> Expired Hold (30 days) -> Expired Pending Purged (1 day) -> Domain Deleted.
• Expired and deleted .au domain names will be published on the Official Domain Drop List when they become "eligible for purge". The list willl be extremely useful for those who want to recovery domain names or those involved in the domain name aftermarket not to mention our good old friends the cybersquatter.

The full policy can be found at http://www.auda.org.au/pdf/auda-2010-01.pdf.

Brand Protection Begins at Home

As a specialist domain name management and brand protection company we are responsible for assisting trade mark owners securing domain names within the various TLDs around the world.

Offering brand protection services implies that you understand how to adequately protect a brand. This raises the question why do so many domain name management companies make use of marks that are difficult, if not impossible to protect.

Example: Monitor your Mark = MarkMonitor, Get a Safe Name = SafeNames, European DNS = EuroDNS, Names on the Net = NetNames, Electronic Brand Services = eBrandServices.

According to www.ipo.co.uk the above marks have either not been filed as trade marks or probably refused for lack of distinctiveness.

If you practice brand protection then you must practice it at home first.

cn.com promotion

If you do not have a corporate presence in China it will not be possible to regster cn and com.cn domain names. To allow our clients a marketing presence in China we are now promoting cn.com as a temporary alternative to the .cn Chinese extension.

Read our previous blog post on cn.com for more information http://blog.lexsynergy.com/2010/02/cn-dilemma.html.

A two registration is £20.00.