New Asia TLD

ICANN has just given its tentative approval to the creation of the new .asia top level domain (TLD), intended to create a unified online Asian identity. The DotAsia Organization Ltd., which will administer .asia intends to offer domains in English as well as a number of Asian languages. Registration will be limited to entities in the Asia region, which interestingly, will include Australia.

Finalization of the contract will likely take at least several weeks and could take as long as several months. Actual registration of .asia domains will likely not take place for six months to a year after finalization of the contract. Following in the footsteps of .eu, the .asia top level domain will offer a sunrise registration period where trademark owners will be able to protect their rights by registering .asia domains corresponding to their trademarks before general registration opens to the public at large. Intellectual property owners and the public alike can only hope that .asia doesn’t follow .eu too closely as it is generally accepted that the .eu sunrise period was tainted by numerous entities who improperly acquired a large number of trademarked and generic terms during sunrise by taking advantage of various loopholes in the .eu regulations, such as establishing multiple registrars and obtaining spurious Benelux trademark registrations.

To learn more about .asia and how to protect your Asian intellectual property rights online, please feel free to contact our related Domain Name Registrar, LadasDomains, by email or by phoning Marc Trachtenberg at 1-312-431-0202