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 order, 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 http://www.denic.de/background/court decisions.html.

Background information

About DENIC eG

As the central registry, DENIC administers the now more than 13 million domains under the Top Level Domain .de and thus provides a crucial resource for users of the Internet. It sees its role as that of a competent, impartial provider of services for all domain holders and Internet users. With 121 employees, DENIC creates the foundation through its work for German Internet pages and e-mail addresses to be accessible throughout the world. The about 270 members of the Cooperative are IT or telecommunications businesses based in Germany and elsewhere. Working in cooperation with them and other partners, DENIC is committed to guarantee the secure operation of the Internet and its further worldwide development as a not-for-profit organization. It operates the automatic electronic registration system for its members, runs the domain database for the Top Level Domain .de and the German ENUM domain (.9.4.e164.arpa), manages the name server services for the .de zone at currently 15 locations distributed throughout the world, and renders a considerable contribution to the further organizational and technical development of the Internet in cooperation with international bodies (e.g. ICANN, CENTR, IETF).For further information please contact:

DENIC eG
Public Relations
Stefanie Welters
Fon: +49 69 27235-274
Email: mailto:presse@denic.de