.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.