New criteria to reject abusive .eu domain registrations has been established by the European Court of Justice. According to reports, a clause for using special characters has been exploited, in particular by Austrian company Internetportal und Marketing GmbH.

Using the “&” symbol, the company managed to register 33 generic trademarks before the three phase period of setting up .eu domains started back in 2005. Internetportal intended to register, and profit from, the registration of 180 generic domain names before general registrations began.

European laws allow for the use of domain names without symbols only, and on one company challenging the registration of a domain name from Internetportal, the court has since revoked its claims to its abusive registrations.

The Court has been establishing what it means to register domain names in “bad faith”, saying of Internetportal:

Continue reading: Changes to .eu domains and use of symbols: domain registrations in "bad faith"

Today is a big day for Europeans with the availability of .eu IDNs. Interestingly, so far most of the names registered are German.

Here is a list of the first ten IDNs registered. All of them are in German and contain umlauts.

1. ärzte.eu (doctors)
2. börse.eu (stock exchange)
3. flüge.eu (flights)
4. bücher.eu (books)
5. ferienhäuser.eu (vacation homes)
6. reisebüro.eu (travel agency)
7. büro.eu (office)
8. küche.eu (kitchen)
9. müller.eu (miller, also a last name)
10. öl.eu (oil)

A lot of the premium names have already been picked up and will be auctioned in the comings weeks.

It will be interesting to see how IDNS stack up against identical names without special characters. Misspellings like ol.eu (öl) and fluge.eu (flüge) have been registered for years. I think speakers of languages that use non-Latin characters have gotten used to altering their spelling for the web, after all.

Continue reading: .eu IDNs launch

Those itching to get their hands on a non-Latin character domain will be happy to know that .eu registrars are now accepting preorders for IDNs.

The names cost the same as a normal .eu and are available on a first come, first serve basis. IDN registration will go live on December 10.

There will be no sunrise period for the new names, so it wouldn’t be a bad idea for trademark holders to preregister. Considering the diverse nature of Europe and its many languages, .eu is fulfilling its role as Europe’s TLD. It’s great that the registry stepped up to the plate so early.

Continue reading: Preregistration for .eu IDNs now open

An unreported deal up until now, Exterminator.com sold in a private sale for £369,871, or $600,000 USD. The buyer remains unknown.

Country-code domains have been doing very well as of late. Antivirus.es sold for $63,325 in a private sale, while Blackjack.eu reached $45,000 in an online auction.

Most interestingly, patiofurniture.net, which was originally bought in 2006 for a measly $2,411, sold for $30,000! This is highly unusual for a two-word .net. I’m sure the seller was laughing all the way to the bank.

Source | DNJournal

Continue reading: Exterminator.com sells for $600,000

Yesterday, Bulgeria made news when it announced the availability of its .bg extension in Cyrillic. Now, two more extensions are stepping up to the IDN plate: .eu and Russia’s .rf.

Because .eu is a TLD intended for all of Europe, plans are in place to support alphabets for 23 different languages starting December 10. This will make it the most linguistically diverse domain extension in the world.

Not to be left out of the picture, Russia will begin accepting Cyrillic registrations next summer on the .rf extension, a previously unused domain for the Russian Federation.

Source | Domain Name News

Continue reading: More domain extensions to be IDN-ready

More details about the sale of Christian.com have emerged. The buyer is Boris Kreiman, the same person who bought Call.com for £675,364 ($1.1 million USD). He plans on using the name for a Christian social networking and general information site.

Kreiman has also acquired several other names as of late, but is keeping the details secret.

In other news, The European Registry of Internet Domain Names (EURid), the operator of the .eu TLD, announced a growth of 66,129 new registrations in July. This is a 15% increase from the same time last year. A recent progress report showed an annual increase of 3.1%. Considering the tough economic times, this growth is very good.

Continue reading: More details about Christian.com sale emerge, .eu registry grows