.US Registration Information

There is only one chance to be at the start of something big. April 24, 2002 represents Independence Day for .us domain names. For the very first time all Americans and American organizations will be able to easily register their domain name under .us.

We expect hundreds of thousands of names to be registered in the first months. We wouldn't be surprised if .us grows to be the largest ccTLD in the world. After all, .us is America's Internet address. Whether you're an individual looking to establish a standout email address, a proud American business, a government or non-profit organization that provides service to Americans - .us is the best domain name for you.

We are taking orders now for .us registrations. The registry will begin accepting live registrations, on a first come, first served basis, on April 24. We want to have your order ready for processing on the first day.

We anticipate strong, early demand for .us. Contact us soon and place your order for your .us domain names.

.us Sunrise Pre-Registration General Information

• All Sunrise pre-registrations are open to trademark holders only. (Detailed information provided below)
• Sunrise pre-registrations are done using asynchronous registration. This means that resellers will collect pre-registrations and submit them to Tucows who will then submit to the NeuStar registry.
• The pre-registration selection process is a round robin selection method used by Afilias during the Sunrise and Landrush periods. The process will operate like this:
  
  All applications (i) for which there were one or more IP claims and the applicant elected to proceed; or (ii) that did not match an IP claim, will be categorized ("Queued") by the Tucows and other participating registrars. All of the domain names in each registrar's Queue shall be randomized by NeuStar in preparation for the Round Robin selection process.
  
  The Round Robin selection process shall consist of a series of selection rounds. Prior to the start of each round, the selection order for the registrar Queues shall be randomized. During each round, domain name applications matching a previously selected domain name shall be discarded from the selection pool and shall result in a "lost turn" for that round for that participating registrar. The Round Robin process shall continue until the last domain name in the last registrar queue has been analyzed.
  
  Note: Prior to submission of domain name applications to NeuLevel, Tucows will run a randomization process to determine the domain name application to submit to NeuLevel - for duplicate submissions only. (e.g. Two domain name applications for www.tucows.us)
  
  This is done in order to maximize the success rate of Tucows names within the NeuLevel queue.

.us Sunrise Basic Policies and Requirements:

• The Sunrise period is exclusive to owners of existing or pending U.S. trademarks prior to the opening of public first-come, first-served registrations. (April 2002)
• During the Sunrise period, owners of existing or pending U.S. trademarks will be able to apply for .us domain names that correspond to their existing marks.
• Holders of trademarks that have been registered or applied for as of July 27, 2001 with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) will be eligible to apply for .us domain names through Tucows.
• Note: No common law, state, or international trademarks will be processed during the .us Sunrise period. Any domain registrations that do not exactly match trademarks in the PTO database must be submitted separately and processed once the .us Registry goes live in mid- to late-April, 2002.

.us Sunrise Trademark Property Information Type (PTOType):

The USPTO submitted must be accurate and be based on the trademark holders trademark application or registration. The trademark validations performed by the Registry (these are checks beyond what the parser/validator will provide) will include the following:

1. Lookup the submitted serial number in the USPTO database to identify the appropriate trademark filing record. The serial number, unlike registration number or any other data field is always present and always unique. If the submitted serial number is not valid, the submittal will "fail".
2. Compare 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. If there is no exact match, the record "fails."
3. Compare the submitted trademark mark in ASCII to the trademark in the USPTO database, ignoring spaces and special characters in the mark such as commas, dashes and periods. If there is no exact match, the record "fails".
4. Compare the submitted domain name to the USPTO trademark in the USPTO database. Before comparing, 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. The comparison is first performed by eliminating special characters, punctuation marks and spaces. If this does not yield a match, the special characters are replaced with a hyphen, spaces are eliminated and a match is attempted again.
   
   Note: Domain name labels are created from marks by eliminating spaces, special characters, and punctuation characters including: ` ~ ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) _ + = { } { } : : " ' < , > . ? / \ | .' replacing them with no space or a hyphen.
   
   For example:
   
   1. MP3.com becomes MP3com or MP3-com
   2. Barnes & Noble becomes barnesnoble or barnes- noble
   3. excite@home becomes excitehome or excite- home
   4. Nike_Just Do It becomes nikejustdoit or nike-justdoit
   
   If the resulting (converted trademark to domain name) is not an exact match, the record "fails".
5. Compare the submitted Owner Name to the USPTO owner name. Before comparing, eliminate all common words from the owner including "the". "and", "inc.", "incorporate", "company", "co." & "corporation". Require at least 60% of remaining words (performed left to right on both resulting strings) match or the record "fails". An exact match is not required as companies often express their names in different ways (Pepsi, Inc. vs. Pepsi 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. Compare 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" compare the Registration # submitted with the USPTO registration # - if different, the record fails.

Sunrise and Real-Time .us Nexus Requirements:

Prospective registrants in the usTLD must fall in one of three U.S. Nexus categories and must certify that they have a "bona fide presence in the United States." Prospective registrants must indicate their use of the domain by selecting one of the following categories: Note: By agreeing to the policies of the registry, registrants agree to having one of the requirements below. Nothing further is required from the reseller to prove the registrant has a legitimate registration.

You can view the entire Nexus Requirements document here

Nexus Category 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 (iii) whose primary place of domicile is in the United States of America or any of its possessions.

Nexus Category 2
An 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 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).

Nexus Category 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.

• If foreign entity, Applicant must state country of citizenship.
• Check from category list, basis for compliance with Nexus requirement - regularly sells goods in the United States; regularly provides services in the United States; regularly engages in business activities, trade or other business (commercial or non-commercial including not-for-profit) relations in the United States;
• Maintains an office or other property within the United States.

If you are interested in learning more about .us, please see our FAQ here. You may also want to check out the .us Registration Agreement here.