Regulatory changes for .au

On April 12, the Australian registry tightens its rules for registering domain names with extensions under .au.

The requirement applies to your legal trademark, which must be registered in Australia. Previously, the rules implied that the domain name and the brand would have a relationship that was “closely and substantially connected”, but this is now being changed and instead “exact match” is required.

Example from the registry:

With the brand “A Pretty Horse Carousels” you can have:

• aprettyhorsecarousels.com.au
• prettyhorsecarousels.net.au

But not:

• phc.com.au
• carousels.net.au
• aprettyhorse.com.au
• horsecarousels.com.au

The change affects both new and existing domain names. Being a customer of Dotkeeper, we will contact you if you have domain names affected by this.

If you are interested in discussing trademark protection – legal and digital – in Australia, or elsewhere, we are available.