auDA reviews .au domain name policy

The Australian domain name administrator, au Domain Administration Ltd (auDA), the industry body that sets policy for all .au domain names, released an issues paper on 18 May 2007. The policy issues that auDA is considering as part of its current policy review include:

1. should the .au domain space be opened up for direct registrations, eg freehills.au, businessname.au, and
2. should the sale of .com.au and .net.au domain names be allowed. Currently straight sales of these domain names are not allowed (compared with .com and .net domain names), although transfers of .com.au and .net.au domain names are permitted in a number of circumstances, including where there has been a sale of a business.

Written submissions are invited by 15 June 2007 (see http://www.auda.org.au/) and auDA is also conducting an online survey relating to these issues.

This article was written by Craig Smith, Senior Associate of the Sydney Litigation team.

For more information on this article, please contact Frances Drummond, Partner in the Sydney Patents & Trade Marks group, and Celia Davies, Partner in the Melbourne Patents & Trade Marks group.

For more information in general please contact

Name : Celia Davies
Title : Partner
Office : Melbourne
Phone : +61 3 9288 1473
Fax : +61 3 9288 1567
Email : celia.davies@freehills.com

Name : Frances Drummond
Title : Partner
Office : Sydney
Phone : +61 2 9225 5512
Fax : +61 2 9322 4000
Email : frances.drummond@freehills.com