Nominet begins sunrise registration for short .uk names

Trademark owners looking to snap up one of the limited short .uk domains will get their first chance from midday today when the registration sunrise period opens.

Rights holders will have until 17 January 2011 to apply for a domain that matches their trademark via a registrar accredited by .uk registry Nominet.

Applicants will then need to have their intellectual property rights checked by validation agent CMS Cameron McKenna, according to Nominet.

This will require evidence of using the trade mark in the UK prior to 1 January 2008, however, the registry said. The deadline for applying to CMS Cameron McKenna with this information is midday on 31 January 2011.

At each stage, where there are two or more qualifying applicants for a domain name, an open auction process will be used to decide the successful applicant, with any profits going to the Nominet Trust.

After the Registered Rights sunrise phase ends Nominet will begin an Unregistered Rights sunrise phase, to be followed finally by a landrush period, although further information on these will not be announced until 2011.

The decision to make available one-letter, two-letter and single-number domains for registration came after Nominet undertook a three-month consultation with its stakeholders early this year.

A sunrise WHOIS tool is available which can be used to check on the status of domain name applications.