RegistryPro Inc launched the sunrise period for .pro names yesterday, during which trademark holders will have the chance to block their marks from being registered by cybersquatters. This period will also be the only chance non-US professionals will have to register their names until RegistryPro has expanded into their countries.

RegistryPro COO Sloan Gaon told ComputerWire that professionals will be able to buy a sunrise reserve domain from any of RegistryPro’s 10 to 20 partner registrars. RegistryPro has put a wholesale price of $500 on this product.

The service reserves your .med.pro, .cpa.pro or .law.pro name for four years, but you will not be able to use it until RegistryPro has been able to verify your credentials, which means gaining access to your local database of professional credentials.

Unfortunately for those outside the US, RegistryPro needs to have relationships with the organizations that run the primary credentials databases in any given nation. Currently, the company has access to these databases in all the US states, but nowhere else.

Gaon said RegistryPro is trying to build a trust model, so that when people send email to a .med.pro address, for example, they know they’re emailing a doctor. The company will check registrants’ professional accreditations and will issue a digital certificate with every name registered.

Our ability to serve some jurisdictions will be slow to get to, Gaon said. The trust model takes precedence over everything else. He said the company expects to offer active registrations in Canada, the UK, Germany and Australia not too long after the US becomes available in July. Zimbabwe may take longer.

The Internet Corp for Assigned Names and Numbers granted RegistryPro the right to offer .pro in November 2000. ICANN is currently in the closing stages of a reform process, a key part of which was an attempt to appear relevant to all internet-using nations, despite its close ties to the US government.

ICANN definitely raised concerns about the rollout but they realized .pro is a different type of registry, RegistryPro’s Gaon said. They understood that some rules that apply to other registries do not apply to .pro.

An ICANN spokesperson said: RegistryPro is focusing on the US to begin with because it’s the largest credentialed market… We’re optimistic they’ll swiftly roll out out to Europe and beyond.

For trademark holders that want to defensively register their trademarks, RegistryPro has two sunrise options. For $1,500 (wholesale), they block their marks in .med, .law and .cpa, and any future second-level domains under .pro, for four years. For $500 (wholesale) they block in one SLD.

Gaon said it has learned lessons from .info on the technical side and from .biz on the legal side with its sunrise period. Afilias Ltd, which runs .info, suffered from vast quantities of fraudulent trademark claims in its sunrise. NeuLevel LLC, which offers .biz, was hit with lawsuits for offering a lottery system in its sunrise.

RegistryPro is addressing the technical issues with some automatic verification of the information entered by wannabe sunrise registrants. If somebody enters an obviously phony trademark number or date, for example, the system will pick it up.

For the month of June, any trademark holder that believes somebody else has fraudulently registered its mark will be able to pay $350 to challenge the registration. The challenges will be evaluated by RegistryPro staff.

On a permanent basis, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) will arbitrate registration disputes, using ICANN’s established Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy to determine whether a name has been cybersquatted or not.

The regular price for a registration will be $125 per year, which includes the price of the digital certificate. Gaon declined to name the digital certificate provider, but Register.com sells GeoTrust Inc certs, which makes it a likely partner for RegistryPro. Baltimore Technologies Ltd was also involved in RegistryPro at an early date.

Source: Computerwire