The Indian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, 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 trademark 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 trademark owners to register domain names with their trademarks 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, registrations were only permitted with the secondary and top level domains .co.in. These registrations were 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 registrations shall be granted only to the registered trademark owners and not to other parties. After the Sunshine Period, registration shall be opened to the general public.
In order to deter cyber squatters, Abu-Ghazaleh Intellectual Property (AGIP) highly recommend that clients apply for registration of domain names in relation to all their registered trademarks for the ccTLDs .in and .co.in.
AGIP charges for domain name registration and renewal are $120 and $60 respectively. Should you be interested in registering these domains, please contact Domain Names Department at AGIP: domain.names@tagi.com, and we shall provide you with more details about the registration process.