Austin Technology Law Blog : Texas Technology Lawyers & Attorneys for Copyright, Trademarks & Software Licensing in Houston, Dallas & Austin TX

This isn’t the first time a country licensed its country domain for worldwide public use.  Cameroon(.cm) and Tuvalu (.tv) have had some success with taking their country domain public. Although not the amount of success anticipated for .co. When the Cameroon .cm domain launched a similar hype existed, but this time it seems more legitimate. According to Domain Name News, the .cm domain was more intended for typosquatters (when a person forgets to type the “o” in .com – and redirects them to a .cm ad page), where the .co has taken precautions to make sure existing domains and protected marks may obtain priority to their current domain name. These actions would appear to attempt to legitimize the domain and differentiate it from its .cm look alike.  But the question remains whether .co will become a legitimate alternative to .com. .Co Internet S.A.S. hopes the public:

1)         Won’t find any reason to cheapen of the legitimacy of .co as suitable option to .com

2)         Is enticed by the strong relation of Co as the common abbreviation for a company; and

3)         The current trend of shortening links continues.

Although well into the release, .Co Internet continues to have a daunting task in distributing these domains to the public. To ensure fairness in the registration process, .Co Internet instituted aLaunch Plan with several stages for .co applicants. The stages of implementation, according to the rules and regulations instituted are as follows: the Grandfather Process, the Sunrise Process, Landrush, and then General Availability. Unfortunately, the time limits for the Grandfather and Sunrise sections expired on March 31^st and June 10^th, respectively. The Grandfather Process pertained to sites already present in Colombia such as .co or .com.co (third level names) sites. While the Sunrise process provided trademark holders, who held a national granted trademark issued before July 30, 2008, eligibility to secure their “protected” domain name and mark. 

Currently, we are in the Landrush stage of the implementation of the .co domain launch plan. Therules provide that an applicant can apply for any name not secured in the previous stages. To be an applicant you must be an interested party and meet the technical requirements imposed by the registry. The catch, for better or for worse, is that if more than one person applies for a domain name then an auction will occur. The Landrush phase ends on July 13^th, according toGodaddy.com. Then the last phase of the launch plan, General Availability, begins July 20^th. Any domain name not yet purchased in the previous stages of the launch plan will be open to the public. Therefore, if you have some valuable .com real estate that you don’t want diluted, you should visit a domain registrar and snatch up your name.. With big names like Twitter and TechCrunch jumping on the .co bandwagon, you better hurry.