Regional Court of Munich I Confirms Lawfulness of DENIC Procedure

The central Registry for .de domains, DENIC, remains free to carry out registrations of domains newly allowed to be registered, such as the one- and two-character domains and domains whose name is composed exclusively of numerals, as per a specific point in time with the exclusive applicable standard being the principle of priority or equal opportunities for everybody. The Regional Court of Munich I thus rejected the claim for registration of the br.de domain asserted by the Bavarian radio station "Bayerischer Rundfunk" on the grounds of anti-trust laws.

In its decision of 10 February 2010 (reference number 37 O 19801/09), the court annulled the temporary injunction obtained against DENIC by the Bavarian radio and television station, which previously prohibited registration of the br.de domain by DENIC in the name of a third party.

According to the court's judgment, the "first come, first served" principle applied by the Registry, which strives for greatest possible equal treatment of all applicants, is non-discriminating and does thus not violate the provisions of the German Act Against Restraints of Competition (GWB).

Since the Bayerische Rundfunk already has an extensive Internet presence and thus exclusion from the relevant market of the "World Wide Web" cannot be put forward as an argument, the radio station cannot claim unfair discrimination as a rationale for being granted another Internet access, argues the court. Neither is DENIC obliged to provide a waiting period in form of a so-called "sunrise period", during which potential claims of holders of possibly existing name and/or identifying marks rights can be verified.

Applications for the registration of new domains submitted before the domain was officially released and rejected by DENIC at that time do not provide a basis for claiming a privilege when the domain is finally released at a later date, so the court explicitly concludes.

A similar ruling had already been issued by the Regional Court of Frankfurt am Main in a court order dated 21 October 2009 (reference number 3 10 O 38/09), when it rejected the request of a British enterprise for a temporary injunction granting a privilege with regard to the registration of the domain tv.de.

To read the full text of the quoted judgement, go to DENIC's webpage "Court Decisions" at www.denic.de/en/background/court-decisions.html.