It has been announced that there are plans to relax the rules for registering .pt domain names at the second level (for example, name.pt). It had been planned for these changes to go live on February 1, 2008 with a Sunrise period and a Go Live date for unrestricted registration on March 1, 2008. However these dates have been put back as the .pt registry consults further with the community. As we understand the changes are currently still set to take place but at a date not yet decided.

Current registration rules for .pt domain names restrict registrations to two categories. These are:

• companies incorporated in any jurisdiction with the same name as the domain name

• owners of a matching Trade Mark registered in any jurisdiction.

Registration of a domain name under .com.pt is already unrestricted