Author Peter Goodman

Date 9 August 2006

Congratulations to those early birds who have caught the .eu worm! Those who have taken advantage of the new .eu top level domain ("TLD") include SA Law's clients and of course SA Law itself. EURid, the registry for the .eu domain, has published figures showing that .eu is already the third most widely-used TLD in Europe.

An attraction of the domain name is that it establishes a clear link between businesses and Europe; an inexpensive method of taking advantage of European credentials.

If you have Community-wide intellectual property rights; a Community trade mark, design or patent, a .eu domain name will be a valuable edition to your portfolio. Many organisations, including those without a presence in the EU, have registered the .eu TLD as a protective measure to avoid others diverting traffic from their website. This strategy is simple and much cheaper to put in place than bringing trade mark infringement, passing off and/or domain name dispute actions against third parties that have registered a domain name identical or similar to yours.

If you would like more information about domain name strategy please contact our Peter Goodman on 01727 798103 or at peter.goodman@salaw.com.

© SA LAW 2006
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