The seventh new “gTLD” have to been approved by ICANN in November 2001; “.Pro” is also the last on working because on April 23 the extension announced the beginning of its “sunrise period”. It appears after .biz and .info, in agreement with the last esteem, the ones that would add less than 2 million of the registered names. The .pro seems that it isn’t the one destined to revolutionize the nomination of all the world landscape. It was part of “narrow space” for extensions, the new gTLD only goes, by the moment, to the non grouped American professions, they won’t be able to use more than a domain of second level in function of its specialty: Mr. Smith, the lawyer will have to use, for example, the address www.smith.law.pro] while Dr John Doe will be consoled with [www.doe.med.pro. The professions in relation with accounting will benefit with the sub-domain cpa.pro, always reserved for Americans.

In return, the sunrise period is accessible for all by itself, in the whole world. The point is that the index allows to owners of trade marks to register, against justification and with an amount that can be from $1000 to $3000, its mark name under .pro extension. So, like the Index points out, “Coca-Cola can chose to register only to Coca-cola law.pro,- this service is called dotproguard- or to prefer protecting its mark not only in the three existent sub domain (.law.pro, .med.pro, and .cpa.pro), not only inside those that will be able to create later, dotproblock service”. A kind of insurance on the future can be useful in the sense the Index wants to increase its public to estrangers and it makes proposals in terms of “local” sub domains like, for example, “avocat.pro”.

But today we can’t still say when we will be able to use this in France, for example. Actually, if professionals want to take benefits in .pro, all of them that aren’t Americans must give a proof that they use it. It can be about a registration into Lawyers College, into the Order Counsel, but the validity of this declaration will be checked by the Registrar   at each year ending. Nowadays, RegistryPro says this information isn’t accessible in other countries; it is only in the USA.

In return, an American commercial society will be able to obtain a domain name in .pro if the department that makes the application is juridical, countable or into working medicine area. This is equivalent to trust, for example to a bank lawyer the “societe-generale.law.pro” domain name! The cyber squatting risk still exists! We only need to know if the rates and a certain complex procedure are justified: the main characters were raising and it is for sure by the previous tentative from the others gTLDs!

See www.registrypro.com

JCV & SB