British businesses have been far slower than their European counterparts in applying for a .eu domain name, meaning that many now stand to lose out to “cybersquatters” with no genuine claim to a web address.

As the deadline for companies to apply expired yesterday, only 1.5 per cent of British businesses (30,000 out of two million) had staked a claim to an .eu name, accounting for only 9.2 per cent of the overall number of applications.

German companies were far more punctual, making up 28.6 per cent of applications, while Dutch and French companies accounted for 16.6 per cent and 11 per cent respectively.

The end of the four-month grace period, in which companies and owners of trademarks and brand names were given priority, means that it is “open season” for applications, and would-be owners need not demonstrate an interest in a name when they pay the £35 price tag to register it.

Although most large companies and owners of well-known trademarks have applied to protect their names, many lesser known companies with customers or operations in Europe will be powerless to prevent individuals without a vested interest from registering their names or brands.

“What was required previously was evidence of a prior right to a name. As of yesterday, that no longer applies and the floodgates are open,” said Jonathan Robinson, chief operating officer of NetNames, a British registrar that has processed the applications of more than 30 per cent of FTSE 100 companies.

The Department of Industry said that it was up to individual companies to decide whether they needed to register a .eu domain name, but registrars said that the proportion of applications from British businesses was surprisingly low, given that more than a quarter of the top 500 European companies were British.

Applicants were accepted on a “first come, first served” basis so long as they could demonstrate a relevant interest in the name. Out of 330,000 registrations that were made, a total of 95,000 were disputed.

Emap, which publishes the men’s magazine FHM, had to surrender ownership of www.fhm.eu to an obscure German music collective called H.H.Babe, while Volkswagen beat Ralph Lauren to the registration of www.polo.eu by a mere three minutes and 24 seconds.

The domain name www.discovery.eu also met with a tussle, with the television channel narrowly nudging out the Land Rover car company.

The fastest application, coming just 1.7 seconds after the opening time of 11am on December 7, was by a Swedish company for www.sex.eu — a name that attracted twice as many applications as any other.

The next highest were hotel.eu (123 applications), travel.eu (97) and jobs.eu (93).

European domain names are expected eventually to number in the millions. There are 85.6 million sites registered in total on the web, with the most popular domains being .com (40 million sites), .de (9 million), .net (5.5 million), and .co.uk (4.5 million).

In the four hours it opened the .eu domain to the general public yesterday, Eurid, the European Registry of Internet Domain Names, received more than three quarters of a million applications.

Domain menu

Total number of
.eu applications
by companies: 330,000

Number of
disputed .eu
domain names: 95,000

Business applications
for .eu by country (%):

Germany28.6
Holland16.6
France11
Britain9.2

Total number of
domain names
on web: 85.6 million

Of which:

.com 40 million
.de 9 million
.net 5.5 million
.co.uk 4.5 million
.org 3 million

Most popular (number
of applications):

sex.eu 236
hotel.eu 123
travel.eu 97
jobs.eu 93
hotels.eu 92
casino.eu 85
business.eu 80
poker.eu 79
golf.eu 75
shopping.eu 72

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