.MOBI Sunrise Deadline

Sunrise preriod extended

mTLD, the .MOBI Registry operator, has extended the Trademark Sunrise Registration period for the .MOBI launch to 22 September 2006. The Trademark Sunrise Registration period gives intellectual property owners an opportunity to register their trademarks as .MOBI domain names.

However, in reality, you need to get on with this process if you haven't already! Talk to us now if you need help with this.

Sunrise requirements - you need a trade mark!

The requirements for a Trademark Sunrise Registration remain the same. A qualified trademark owner is anyone who holds a trademark or service mark applied for prior to July 11, 2005 and granted before the date of the domain name application.

The "Landrush"

The General Registration period is now scheduled to begin on 26 September 2006. General Registration continues indefinitely and commences with an initial two-week Land Rush period when available .MOBI domain names will be able to be registered at special prices. The deadline for inclusion in the initial Land Rush queue is now September 19.

Some clients have requested domain names that mTLD placed on a Premium Name list. In connection with the roll-out of the .MOBI extension, mTLD decided to reserve and allocate a number of common words and phrases using a special release process. No release date has been set. However, this will not occur until after the general launch,  most likely beginning in late 2006. The final list of Premium Names and the allocation method is expected to be released in the next few months. A preliminary list can be found on the .MOBI Web site.

mTLD, in conjunction with WIPO, is developing an administrative process for trademark owners to request the removal of their trademark from the premium list if it meets certain criteria. Details on this process will be published closer to the time of the allocation.

Further information

VeriSign recently hosted a webinar on this subject which you can view by clicking here.

Comments

[Peter Lewis]

In all honesty, aren't .mobi TLDs just a cynical attempt for organisations like ICANN to just make more money? And in addition, the various service providers (such as solicitors and registrars) can't be complaining either, as they too can make more money by advising and helping people to buy them.

I sincerely doubt that as a result of the introduction of .mobi TLDs that we are suddenly going to get lots of new mobile content providers. What is more likely is that the old ones will just buy the .mobi counterparts to their existing sites. For example google.mobi and yahoo.mobi.

This is fine for the big firms who probably won't notice the cost, but for smaller firms it's just yet another hit to the wallet or else lose out to someone who buys up your name with a .mobi extension and "steals" your traffic.

From a technical point of view, the .mobi domain name does not itself tell the server that you're reading it on a mobile device in order to provide more suitable styled pages. The server can tell exactly which browser and platform you're using anyway as virtually all modern browsers automatically give this information to the server when they request data - regardless of whether you use .com .info .org or .mobi.

It also seems madness in my opinion that a TLD aimed at mobile devices with notoriously bad keyboards would have four letters! .com is much quicker to type on a mobile phone, not least because the first two letters of .mobi occupy the same key.

The only possible benefit to the .mobi TLD that I can see is that when advertised, it makes it obvious to the consumer that a certain content provider will serve pages designed for a mobile device. But, I doubt it will be long before we can start assuming that of all major content providers anyway.

[Andrew Mills]

Peter,

Many organisations have shared similar views to yours. However, the positions is not always as it might appear and the Ryanair domain name case mentioned elsewhere in the blog gives some comfort that brand owners don't necessarily need to register every single domain variant.