The priority period for holders of trade mark and trade names in Belgium and Flanders closes on Monday 3 November 2014 at 10:00 CEST.

 DNS Belgium, the registry behind the .be country code TLD for Belgium, is now launching two new TLDs: they are

• .vlaanderen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flanders
• .brussels http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels

These TLDs are two of the 66 new geographical TLD strings featuring in ICANN's new gTLD program. ICANN requires registries of all such new TLDs to run, at minimum, a priority period for trade marks registered in the Trademark Clearinghouse.

The nature of the Trademark Clearinghouse may be more suited to larger rather than smaller companies. Because of this, DNS Belgium have elected to run an extra, special launch phase for local businesses and government institutions. During this phase, holders of Benelux and Community Trade Marks, registered company names, trading names, names of official institutions and geographical indications can register their names before the domain launches move into their next phase (during which there is no priority for names and brands).

With the recognised success of the .be ccTLD (1.5 million domains registered) and with the very successful take up of second level domains in geographical TLDs, .vlaanderen and .brussels are going to be very popular and will soon become well-recognised. This is an important heads-up to all businesses and other organisations (and their representatives) who qualify and who may be interested in these names to act now to claim their last opportunity for priority..

Class 46 thanks Ingrid Mennens (trade mark attorney with MARQUES member Novagraaf) for preparing this item.