|
Eleven
years ago
Norwegian
company Elineweb A.S. acquired the
two-letter Norwegian country code domain CO.NO.
Last year the company decided to start selling sub-domains
of CO.NO (for example, business.co.no), a model
that has been employed successfully for many
years by UK based firm CentralNic
with a large portfolio of premier two-letter
.com domains including US.COM, UK.COM
and EU.COM (there is an extensive
interview with CentralNic CEO Ben Crawford
in our latest monthly
newsletter).
|
|
|
However,
Elineweb's .CO.NO
initiative, a partnership between
Elineweb and CoDNS B.V. (a company
established in 2007 by popular domain registrar EuroDNS
S.A.) ran
into a roadblock just as it was beginning to
roll out its service last year. Norid,
the operator of Norway's .NO ccTLD, erected a
series of obstacles (detailed
here) that kept .CO.NO from moving
forward. The company finally had enough and filed
a lawsuit against Norid in September
2011.
|
|
Image
from Bigstock |
On
Tuesday (July 3, 2012) a court
decision (.pdf file) in
favor of .CO.NO was announced,
confirming that the CO.NO initiative fully
complies with the .NO registration
Policy and that Norid may not revoke
the CO.NO domain name. The decision also
required Norid to refute false
information they published on the .CO.NO
initiative and to inform the public and
more specifically all .NO accredited
registrars of the legality of the
initiative. The
court decision cleared the way for .CO.NO
to open their doors for business today.
Sander Scholten, General Manager
at CoDNS B.V., said, “We are glad that
the Court recognizes that our business
model is in line with the .NO
registration Policy and thus, that our
customers’ registrations are
secured." Scholten said that in the
24 hours since the decision was
announced, .CO.NO, who already had |
|
more
than 70 registrars lined up
to sell .Co.NO domains, had received
many more requests for information on
the company's register accreditation
process. |
With
the opening of .CO.NO registrations to the
general public on a first come, first served
basis, all Landrush applications which were
pending are now being activated allowing their
holders to benefit from their registrations as
of today.
|
