News Trademarks, Domain Names, Copyright 2001

Domain names registration in Italy

Rome, 21 may 2001

1) The Domain name registration.

At present, any applicant Company with address and VAT number in the EU is entitled to register an unlimited number of Italian domain names (.IT) on a "first come, first served" basis by signing a declaration form (so called LAR). As a preventive measure to the so-called "cyber-squatting" phenomenon (registration of domain names by unauthorised third parties having no rights on the registered name), we suggest to register the trademarks of main interest as ".IT" domain names (the name should be from a minimum of 3 up to 64 characters, including letters, numbers and hyphens). In case, we shall proceed with the necessary preventive TM and domain name searches. Also, we could set an automatic link (re-direction) to the registrant's already existing web-site (by typing the ".IT" domain name, the Internet user is automatically "re-directed" to this web site).

Transfer of a Domain name upon agreement of the parties is also possible.

2) The Domain name dispute procedure.

In addition to the standard judicial actions to obtain or cancel a domain name which has unlawfully been registered by a third party, we suggest you to consider the Domain name dispute procedure recently adopted in Italy.

We beg to underline that, as an alternative to a judicial action, this faster (45 days) and cost effective procedure is mostly advisable for the typical "cyber-squatting" cases where the following conditions apply: a) bad faith and /or unfair competition of the registrant; b) absence of the registrant's better rights or "lawful interest".

The transfer or cancellation decision is directly enforceable before Italian Registration authority and it can only be appealed before the ordinary judicial Courts.
For a summary of some decisions on domain names please visit "What's news" "Domain names decisions (and indecision)".

3) The works in progress.

Also, please note that discussions are ongoing before the Italian Parliament and before the Italian Registration and Naming Authorities in order to adopt restrictive amendments of the ".IT" registration procedure. The main issues are: - registration as domain names of trademarks, Company or public entity names should be reserved to their owner only - the transfer or cancellation decision should also include a restoration of damages (from a minimum of 5.000 Euro to a maximum of 30.000 Euro). In addition, we are at your disposal to study the possible registration under the new European (".EU") and International (".BIZ", ".PRO", ".COOP", ".NAME", ".INFO", ".MUSEUM", ".AERO") domain names which will be / have been approved.

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