Pre-Register

[jimb]

How do companies deal with pre-registering domain names? Is there a database where you enter, or is it just a lottery system? What if I wanted to pre-register something like www.www.us or something like usa.us? Can I do that?


Jim

 

The way the pre-registrations work are dictated by the Registry, but they are generally done in two stages.

Sunrise and Landrush.

Sunrise are for trademark holders. Since there can be multiple trademarks for a given name (each in a different trademark product space - like Apple Records and Apple Computer), any conflicts are resolved in a round robin approach, where the different registrars submit one name at a time to the Registry and the first to submit a valid trademarked name from a valid trademark holder gets that domain.

Landrush is the same thing but for the general public.

If you have pre-registered for sex.us, and so have 100 other people, the first registrar that submits sex.us in the round robin process (in the case of .US on the 24th of April) gets it.

Most registrars will only accept one pre-registration request for a particular domain - however some will accept as many as are submitted. Most will also refund you completely if you don't get your domain, however some will charge a fee - whether you get your domain or not.

Does this help?

-t

 

[jimb]

yeah, thanks for the clear up.

So do the big guys like register.com and networksolutions always get the first pick in the round robin?

Or is it totally on the lottery.


Jim

 

The round robin is truly a leveling process, where the size of the registrar does not matter.

In this case, each registrar gets one shot at a domain of their choice, and then it moves along to the next registrar, around the circle so to speak, until each registrar runs out of applications.

-t

 

[jimb]

What happens if two registrars want microsoft.us? Can they both register it and then try and sell it to mircosoft?


Jim

 

[GesslerGessler is verified member.]

I beleive if someone got microsoft.us and tried to sell it to microsoft, that would be considering "cybersquatting", i think it is, heh.

I think you can get in some serious trouble if you do that..