.CO sunrise sees gaming attempts

.CO Internet has published a list of over 1,500 domains that were rejected during its two-month-long trademark-protection sunrise period for the .co namespace.

While the document does not break down the reasons why each name was rejected, it appears to list some attempts to game the system by registering non-existent trademarks or trademarks belonging to other entities.

It’s a 48-page document, compiled by Deloitte, but the range of rejected domains can be illustrated without leaving the C’s.

Names that were applied for and rejected despite being household names include the likes of circuitcity.co, compusa.co, comet.co and currys.co, all electronics retailers, and chevrolet.co.

Since these are names for which trademarks certainly do exist, I’m drawing the conclusion that the sunrise applicant was not the owner of the trademark.

There were also attempts to register personal names, such as christopher.co and courtney.co, as well as geographical terms, such as coventry.co, cleveland.co and chennai.co.

One wildly optimistic applicant even took a chance on colombia.co.

Some applicants went after the .co variants of popular .com web sites, such as chucknorrisfacts.co and collegehumor.co.

In terms of generic terms, applications were rejected for the likes of coffeehouse.co and countrymusic.co.

All of these names, and 1,500 more from the list, will be released back into the landrush period, in which anybody can attempt to register them, a few hours from now.

The recently extended landrush period ends this Friday. General availability begins next week.

Hat tip to Key-Systems, which released the list earlier today.

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Tagged: .co, .co internet, chuck norris facts, deloitte, key-systems, sunrise, trademarks