Is Your Approach to Domains in the Kingdom United?

The United Kingdom is facing the possibility of Scotland leaving the "Kingdom" but on the domain name front is facing an influx of new generic Top Level Domains (new gTLDs) that will have or is having a direct impact on trade mark owners within the UK.

Before the April 2014, it was sufficient to have registered the domain names below (excluding the restricted TLDs such as .plc.uk and ltd.uk) BUT no longer!

• yourtrademark.co.uk
• yourtrademark.org.uk
• yourtrademark.me.uk

On 29 April 2014, .London rolled into town offering the Londoners and others the opportunity to have a localised domain name for this commercial capital. See http://www.lexsynergy.com/london for more .London information.

On 10 June 2014, .UK came ashore allowing the registration of yourtrade.uk, leaving out the co, org and me before the .uk. No panic there! If you have a registered co.uk, subject to some fancy rules, you have 5 years from the launch date to secure the matching .uk domain name. Read more about .UK at http://www.lexsynergy.com/uk.

On 15 July 2014, .Scot marched across the rolling hills, allowing all that have a connection to Scotland to register .scot domain names. Read more about .Scot at http://www.lexsynergy.com/scot.

On 1 September 2014, .Wales and .Cymru landed on the shores to create an Internet space that is Welsh without restriction. Read more about .Wales at http://www.lexsynergy.com/wales.

What do trade mark owners need to do?

Firstly, if you have not secured your trade mark or business name in the above new gTLDs the time is NOW! Rather secure your matching domain names for a few Pounds than have to deal with lawyers for many more Pounds.

Secondly, establish a procedure for the launch of new trade marks that include registrations in the above TLDs.

Get in touch if you need assistance navigating the new UK domain name landscape - support@lexsynergy.com or call us on +44 20 81331 319.