.IN DOMAIN REGISTRATIONS IN INDIA

.IN DOMAIN REGISTRATIONS IN INDIA

The Ministry of Information Technology, Government of India, with effect from January 1, 2005 has liberalized the policies for registration of country code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs). According to this policy, it will now be possible for the registered trade mark and service mark owners to register their trade / service marks as secondary level domain names along with the top level domain name in India which is .in. It is also possible for the trade mark owners to register domain names with their trade marks at the third level along with the second and top level domain name .co.in. To give an example, it will now be possible to register domain name Yahoo.in and Yahoo.co.in, subject to Yahoo being a registered trade/service mark in India.

In the past, only registrations were permitted with the secondary and top level domains .co.in. These registrations were only granted to companies having an Indian subsidiary. These norms have now been relaxed and even entities not having a presence in India can register these domains.

The Government of India has also announced a Sunshine Period from January 1, 2005 to January 21, 2005, during which period registrations shall be granted only to the registered trade mark owners and not to other parties. After the Sunshine Period, registration shall be opened to the general public.

In order to deter cyber squatters, we highly recommend that clients apply for registration of domain names in relation to all their registered trade marks for the country code Top Level Domains .in and .co.in.

To this effect, our charges will be the same what we charge in relation to new trade mark applications i.e. US$ 210. There shall be an additional charge of US$ 110, which is the amount payable to the accredited Registrar as the official fee for registration and subsistence of the registration for an initial period of 5 years. Should you be interested in registering these domains, please contact us and we shall provide you with more details about the registration process.