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30th August 2006, 11:17 AM
From .DE nic IDN FAQ:
Q: Why has there been no pre-registration phase (a so-called sunrise period) for the holders of (trade)marks?
A: The experience with the introduction of the gTLDs .info and .biz was that the sunrise period caused difficulties and organizational chaos, and that these were out of due proportion compared with any abusive registrations that may perhaps have been hindered. It must also be borne in mind that this is not just an issue of legal rights associated with (trade)marks, which can probably be fairly easily proven by presenting a certificate from a trade-mark registry. There are also legal rights associated with people's names, and these could well be much more difficult for their holders to prove and for DENIC to verify. A pre-registration period would only make sense if it was really possible to check up on the rights claimed by the applicants. DENIC is quite simply not in a position to carry out that sort of check.
The upshot of this is that IDNs are not going to be treated any differently from other domains. The same priority principle of "first come, first served" applies in precisely the same way as to any other domain under .de. It is also the duty of all domain applicants to check prior to registration that they are not going to be infringing rights of others. DENIC itself does not perform any such check.
Q: I already hold a .de domain in which an umlaut has been replaced by the two-letter equivalent (along the lines of mueller.de for müller.de). Is DENIC going to give me any precedence for registering the corresponding IDN?
No. There would no factual reason to do so either, since mueller.de and müller.de are two completely different domains. It is just like bauer.de, which has nothing to do with baür.de, or poet.de and pöt.de, which are not the same either. Why then should the holder of mueller.de be given any precedence over Germany’s myriad of other Müllers? Such a procedure would go against the clear principle that DENIC has established that a domain goes to whoever applies to register it first – i.e. first come, first served, with no exceptions.
More Q & A: http://www.denic.de/en/faqs/idn_faqs/index.html
Q: Why has there been no pre-registration phase (a so-called sunrise period) for the holders of (trade)marks?
A: The experience with the introduction of the gTLDs .info and .biz was that the sunrise period caused difficulties and organizational chaos, and that these were out of due proportion compared with any abusive registrations that may perhaps have been hindered. It must also be borne in mind that this is not just an issue of legal rights associated with (trade)marks, which can probably be fairly easily proven by presenting a certificate from a trade-mark registry. There are also legal rights associated with people's names, and these could well be much more difficult for their holders to prove and for DENIC to verify. A pre-registration period would only make sense if it was really possible to check up on the rights claimed by the applicants. DENIC is quite simply not in a position to carry out that sort of check.
The upshot of this is that IDNs are not going to be treated any differently from other domains. The same priority principle of "first come, first served" applies in precisely the same way as to any other domain under .de. It is also the duty of all domain applicants to check prior to registration that they are not going to be infringing rights of others. DENIC itself does not perform any such check.
Q: I already hold a .de domain in which an umlaut has been replaced by the two-letter equivalent (along the lines of mueller.de for müller.de). Is DENIC going to give me any precedence for registering the corresponding IDN?
No. There would no factual reason to do so either, since mueller.de and müller.de are two completely different domains. It is just like bauer.de, which has nothing to do with baür.de, or poet.de and pöt.de, which are not the same either. Why then should the holder of mueller.de be given any precedence over Germany’s myriad of other Müllers? Such a procedure would go against the clear principle that DENIC has established that a domain goes to whoever applies to register it first – i.e. first come, first served, with no exceptions.
More Q & A: http://www.denic.de/en/faqs/idn_faqs/index.html