European polo game ends early

The .eu registration process offers an important lesson for firms wanting to guard their interests

It seems to me that at the moment everyone is going crazy about the new European domain name suffix, the imaginatively titled .eu.

According to Eurid, the agency responsible for overseeing .eu, 700,000 domains were registered on the day that they became available to the general public.

This land rush began on 7 April, following a four-month “sunrise period”, during which trademark holders and the like could register first.

In total some 1.3 million .eu domain names had been registered by last week.

Of course, when I say everyone is going crazy about the .eu domains, I may be exaggerating somewhat – 1.3 million is not everyone, and no one is going crazy about the new domains in my house. On the other hand, I do live alone and if I were going crazy would I really admit it in print? That would be a completely mad thing to do.

But I digress. The truth is I’m not in a major hurry to get a .eu domain, because I don’t need a specifically European identity.

Meanwhile, I think that the fact that I have bad teeth should prove to any interested parties that I am not an American; the fact that my jumpers are not stripey shows that I’m not French; I’ve never stood on a street corner hollering into my mobile phone, so I will avoid accusations of Spanishness; and well, Danes etc are too healthy-looking.

So, a .co.uk domain will be fine for me, even if it does mean that ignorant people may think of me in terms of a crude national stereotype – perhaps as one of those awful Brits who are unbearably patronising to foreigners.

That means that any firms that want to register davidneal.eu as a honeypot to get high-spending, good-looking ladies onto their shiny jewellry and handbags e-commerce sites, should go ahead, I’m not going to sue anyone for trademark jiggery-pokery.

Of course, my name is not a trademark. But for some firms, registering a simple domain name could require money to be spent on sharp-suited lawyers.

Take, for example, Polo.eu. Which firm should control that? Volkswagen which makes the little car? Nestlé, which makes the mint with the hole? Ralph Lauren, which makes shirts for gits, or a polo club?

A tough decision, and one that was only reached when Eurid realised that Volkswagen had applied for the domain first.

So, .eu is on its way to being totally snaffled up, and its success is likely to pave the way for yet more top-level domains.

Some terms, like the aforementioned Polo, will be meaningful to a whole host of businesses, so the shrewd companies will try to get in first and register them as soon as possible.

The firms that miss out will be disappointed, and could find that ultimately they lose business, and visitors as a result.

I have one thing to say to companies that slept on their decision to register a .eu domain. The next time the sun rises for applications, you’d better wake up early.