Hong Kong, 17 October 2007 — Building on the momentum of the groundbreaking .Asia Pioneer Domains Program which has attracted global leading brands, DotAsia, the registry operator of the “.Asia” Internet domain, has launched its Sunrise period, a priority registration period for trademark owners and companies.  The Sunrise phase will run through to January 15 2008, giving corporations a chance to register domain to protect their brands online before the general public is invited to take part in the “Landrush” registration phase in February 2008. 

DotAsia has also announced that prominent global brands have adopted the .Asia domain through the Pioneer Domains Program launched earlier this year. Time Inc leads the way showing its strong commitment for the Asia market through the registration of Time.Asia, Fortune.Asia, Life.Asia and other major titles it manages. Other companies or brands queueing up for prime real estate in the booming .Asia cyberspace include Amazon, AOL, AIG, Sony Ericsson, Cosmopolitan, Deutsche Telekom, the Economist, the International Olympic Committee, Yahoo!, NOW TV and others.

To encourage the online community to participate in the Pioneer Domains Program, DotAsia has posted applications received through the program onto the ICANNWiki.org website at http://icannwiki.org/DotAsia-Polling-Grid.  Anyone interested can cast their votes and leave their comments for each application, and give their opinion on who has the best vision for the use of the proposed .Asia domains.  Prospective Sunrise programme participants can also visit the site to see which domain names have already been registered. Among some of the interesting and exciting proposals received through the Pioneer Domains Program are love.asia, games.asia, shopping.asia, sports.asia and jewelry.asia. 

With the value of domain names steadily rising to staggering new heights and the Asia Internet marketplace surpassing the European Union and United States in terms of online population and Internet traffic, the potential value and impact of these names is massive. Just last year, Diamonds.com was sold for US$7.5 Million, while Poker.com was reported to be sold for as high as US$27 Million earlier this year.

“The .Asia Pioneer Domains Programme has laid a foundation for the adoption of the .Asia domain. The commitment from global brands is a solid endorsement for the philosophy of the .Asia Registry: From Asia / For Asia, where we believe that the .Asia domain provides value not only for Asian companies, but also US, Europe and international companies expanding to Asia or providing services for Asia,” said Edmon Chung, CEO, at DotAsia. “The fact that innovative entrepreneurs and leading multinationals as well as Internet-based companies and organisations engaged in traditional businesses are all showing commitment to the .Asia domain indicates the investment value of .Asia names as prime cyber real estate.”

From the bid offers received for domain names, the evidence is convincing that domain names have come of age to become a valuable asset with real negotiable value. Typically, the highest value domains are ones that attract “type-in” traffic. “Asia” as a natural word is a type-in search term that is actively keyed in by Internet users around the world.  Based on statistics reported by Overture, “Asia” as part of a search term is searched for almost up to five times as much as the term “Europe”, and over twenty times more than the term “EU”, a strong indicator of the potential value of a .Asia domain name.

While the community is invited to participate in the voting for domain names within Pioneer Domains Program through the Web 2.0 platform on ICANNWiki.org, DotAsia is also working together with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to ensure that the domain names are awarded in an equitable manner, taking into consideration the protection of intellectual property rights.

“DotAsia is committed to the development of the value of .Asia domains. DotAsia is also committed to the protection of rights of others and deterring infringements. The engagement of the online community through the reach of the ICANNWiki.org web site together with the expertise of WIPO as the Challenge Resolution Provider guarantees the highest degree of integrity that in turn will inspire the confidence of leading companies and dynamic business innovators to invest in a .Asia domain,” Chung added.  “The commitment of prominent brands not only to register but to launch their .Asia domains through the Pioneer Domains Program through registration of AOL.Asia, Mobil.Asia Money.Asia, and SonyEricsson.Asia is the best seal of approval for the new domain in cyberspace for Asia.”

About DotAsia

The DotAsia Organisation is a not-for-profit community-based organisation incorporated in Hong Kong with a focused mission to operate the .Asia Registry. It is the sponsoring organization and registry operator for the .Asia sponsored generic top level domain. The DotAsia Organisation has a purposeful mandate to direct surplus proceeds to initiatives that benefit the community in the region, such as projects to bridge the digital divide and regional research development projects.

All DotAsia media queries please contact:

Amanda de Silva or Cherry Velarde at Upstream Asia, Tel: +(852) 2973 0222. Email: amanda.desilva@upstreamasia.com / cherry.velarde@upstreamasia.com