If you have a .co.uk, org.uk, or .me.uk domain name did you know that your Right of Registration for the, shorter, new .uk domain registration is due to end on 25th June 2019 at 06:00 BST?
As an example, if you own example.co.uk you may have a right to register the new, shorter, example.uk domain name (which Nominet have reserved for eligible domain name owners) – but that right ends soon.
The .uk domain is a new domain extension from Nominet which can be registered in addition to your existing .co.uk, org.uk, .me.uk, etc domains. It does not replace the existing domain extensions from Nominet and there is no requirement to register them but you get the first refusal to do so in this exclusive period for protection purposes
To avoid disappointment, we recommend registering these with us as soon as possible. If you wish to register any .uk aliases (or indeed any other available .uk domains) after 25th June 2019 it would be on a first come first served basis from 1st July 2019. Further information will follow on the open release nearer this date.
Eleanor Bradley, COO of Nominet, said: “For some companies, they will really want to secure the shorter domain for their own use, now or in the future, or to guarantee nobody else can use it.
“Others are happy with the domain they have and don’t want to register or use another. It’s important to stress to those people that the existing domain will continue as normal, and no action is required.”
The global domain name system rules that the same set of characters before the dot (known as the ‘string’) can appear in names with different suffixes. So, the same name with .co.uk, .org.uk and .com can belong to three different people.
Bradley adds: “In the vast majority of cases, very similar domains co-exist with no problems. But for the rare cases where someone is abusing their domain or using it for illegitimate purposes, we have safeguards in place so action can be taken swiftly.”
