The dust has settled after EURid's launch of IDN (Internationalized domain names - other characters than a-z) last Thursday Dec 10. 280 new characters were introduced such as Cyrillic characters and local Spanish, French and German characters. 47.000 .eu domains containing these characters were registered, according to Maria Göth from EURid, the European Registry of Internet Domain Names. She notes that "EURid are very pleased with the launch and the interest in IDNs under .eu".

However, global brands lost out one after the other on their domain names. Nestlé.eu, hägen-dasz.eu, elcorteinglés.eu and elpaís.eu all got registered by other parties than the brands themselves. And that it just the tip of the iceberg. Brand domains are higly valued as companies are in a hurry to recover these domains, and therefore will pay the owner a fee to transfer them over, instead of going through the legal proceedings, which can take months. Even worse, they can be used by phishing by criminal minds. Would you notice if the email is sent from @telefónica.eu or @telefonica.eu?

By not introducing a protective phase for trademark holders EURid has created unnecessary work for IP lawyers worldwide. It´s absurd that a global brand like Nescafé does not own their domain nescafé.eu. Now they have to start an ADR proceeding against this individual in Slovakia, who registered the domain. It seems obvious that EURid should make up for their mistake, and suspend some of these registrations.

Looking ahead several other Registries will introduce IDN for their top level domains over the next year, and this launch is hopefully a lesson learned. Domains should be seen as brands instead of IP numbers.

Other December News

Local presence for Albania domain names; .AL and COM.AL
Stricter regulation for Chinese domain names .CN
New Dominican Republic domain: .DO launches Dec 10 2009