Domain Names - .EU Top Level Domain Becomes Available for Registration by Businesses

The European Union top level domain, .eu, was launched in December, 2005 with a Sunrise registration period that allowed parties with a presence in the European Union who held qualifying registered trademark rights to register domains incorporating such rights. In February, 2006, the second Sunrise period opened to parties with a presence in the European Union who had other qualifying intellectual property rights on which to base their registrations. After just one hour, the Registry reported receiving over 71,000 applications to register ".eu" domain names, with sex.eu, followed by schumacher.eu, realestate.eu and business.eu, being the most sought after. Landrush registration of ".eu" domains became available to all individuals and entities from the European Union on a first-come, first-served basis on April 7, 2006. Over 700,000 new domains were registered in the first four hours of Landrush (See our related article at on the corresponding dispute procedure).