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March 4, 2002
.us is the official country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the United States and the newest domain on the Internet. For years, .us was primarily used by government agencies, as well as schools and libraries, but on October 29, 2001, the Department of Commerce delegated the .us TLD namespace to NeuStar, Inc. and now this domain will be accessible to U.S. citizens, residents, businesses, organizations and government entities.
Who can register a .us domain name? To qualify a registrant must certify that they fall into one of three U.S. Nexus categories by demonstrating real and substantial lawful contacts with, or lawful activities in the United States of America. Specifically, registrants must either be:
1. A natural person (i) who is a United States citizen, (ii) a permanent resident of the United States of America or any of its possessions or territories, or whose primary place of domicile is in the United States of America or any of its possessions.
2. A United States entity or organization that is (i) incorporated within one of the fifty (50) U.S. states, the District of Columbia, or any of the United States possessions or territories or organized, or (ii) otherwise constituted under the laws of a state of the United States of America, the District of Columbia or any of its possessions or (including a federal, state, or local government of the United States, or a political subdivision thereof, and unincorporated organizations based in the United States).
3. An entity or organization (including a federal, state, or local government of the United States, or a political subdivision thereof) that has a bona fide presence in the United States of America or any of its possessions or territories.
Registration for .us will begin with a Sunrise period for trademark holders. This registration period runs from March 4, 2002 through April 9, 2002. Only domain names meeting the requirements below will be eligible for registration during the Sunrise period:
1. Domain names exactly matching the textual, word or numeric elements of the trademark application or registration on file with the USPTO. Special characters, such as spaces, ampersands, and @ symbols, may be eliminated entirely (no space) or replaced with hyphens within a domain name.
a. For example, if you own a trademark application of registration for:
- "SMITH & JONES," you may apply for either SMITHJONES.US or SMITH-JONES.US.
- "ABC COMPANY," you may apply for either ABCCOMPANY.US or ABC-COMPANY.US.
2. Domain names containing only ASCII characters;
3. Domain names only containing alphanumeric characters (letters A-Z, numerals 0-9) and/or hyphens;
4. Domain names containing no more than 63 characters (not including the .us suffix); and
5. Domain names that do not begin or end with a hyphen.All .us domain name applications submitted during the Sunrise period must contain the following information:
1. Requested .us domain name;
2. Exact Trademark;
3. Trademark's date of application;
4. Trademark's date of registration (if applicable);
5. Trademark's application number (Serial Number);
6. Trademark's registration number (if applicable);
7. Names, addresses, telephone numbers, fax numbers and e-mail addresses of the domain name registrant, administrative contact, technical contact and billing representative; (NOTE: Domain Name Registrant must be either the current or original owner of the trademark application or registration)
8. Name servers and their associated IP addresses; and
9. Written confirmation of compliance with .us TLD Nexus requirement.Trademark information submitted must be accurate and be based on the trademark holder's trademark application or registration. Trademark validations will be performed by the Registry and are expected to include the following:
1. Lookup of the submitted serial number (also known as application number) in the USPTO database to identify the appropriate trademark filing record.
2. Comparison of the submitted filing date (also known as the application date) to the trademark record filing date in the USPTO database to determine if both are prior to July 27, 2001.
3. Comparison of the submitted trademark in ASCII to the trademark in the USPTO database, ignoring spaces and special characters in the mark such as commas, dashes and periods.
4. Comparison of the submitted domain name to the trademark application or registration in the USPTO database. Before comparing, the registry will convert the USPTO trademark to an appropriate domain name form by removing spaces, punctuation marks, special characters, and periods and converting these to no-space or dash. For example:
a. MP3.com becomes MP3com or MP3-com
b. Barnes & Noble becomes barnesnoble or barnes-noble
c. excite@home becomes excitehome or excite-home
d. Nike _ Just Do It becomes nikejustdoit or nike-justdoit').5. Comparison of the submitted Owner Name to the USPTO owner name. Before comparing, the Registry will eliminate all common words from the owner including "the", "and", "inc.", "incorporate", "company", "co." and "corporation". At least 60% of remaining words must match. An exact match is not required as companies often express their names in different ways (Pepsi, Inc. vs. Pepsi Cola Incorporated - would pass for example as Pepsi matches Pepsi, and Inc. and Incorporated are stripped before comparison). The Owner name should match at least one of the owners in the USPTO.
6. Comparison of the status of the trademark submitted with the status in the USPTO database. Only "APPLICATION" or "REGISTRATION" is allowed.
7. If the submitted trademark is a "REGISTRATION" it will be compared to the Registration # submitted with the USPTO registration #.
Open registration for non-trademark holders for .us is expected to begin on April 24, 2002.
Corporate Domains, Inc.*, a wholly-owned subsidiary of CSC, is now offering .us registration to CSC customers exclusively. The cost for these registrations will be $35.00 per domain/per year with no administrative fees. Contact Corporate Domains, Inc. today at 1-800-927-9801 and ask for extension 3380 or 3199.
* ICANN accredited registrar