Trademark Owners & Dot Asia

The asia domain extension has been introduced and trademark owners with their marks registered anywhere in the world should highlight September 2007 in their diaries as the registration period for them opens then. There are three phases for these type of applicants:

Phase One is for applicants who have registered their trademarks (in any part of the world) before 16 March 2004, with evidence of use of the mark in the relevant class. The trademark must be identical to the domain name applied for*. Phase Two is for applicant’s who have registered their marks before 6 December 2006 and Phase Three is for applicant’s who want an extended protection for their domain name. As Phase One and Phase Two have the strict criteria that the domain names must be a replica of the trademark, Phase Three provides IP owners with the option to register their trademark together with another word describing their products/services. For example, www.kass.com.asia would be our application under Phase One and www.kass-trademarks.com could be the application under Phase Three.

Company owners get their chance of registering their company names as domains under the .asia from November 2007 onwards and registration is finally open to the public on March 2008.

*there are exceptions to the strict identity rule

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